Structured illumination for tomographic X-ray

diraction imaging
Joel A. Greenberg, Mehadi Hassan, Kalyani Krishnamurthy and David Brady
*
Tomographic imaging of the molecular structure of an object is
important for a variety of applications, ranging from medical and
industrial radiography to security screening. X-ray diraction imaging
is the preeminent technique for performing molecular analysis of large
volumes. Here we propose and demonstrate a new measurement
architecture to improve the source and detector eciency for
diraction imaging. In comparison with previous techniques, our
approach reduces the required overall scan time by 12 orders of
magnitude, which makes possible real-time scanning of a broad range
of materials over a large volume using a table-top setup. This method,
which relies on structuring spatially the illumination incident on an
object moving relative to the X-ray source, is compatible with existing
systems and has the potential to signicantly enhance performance in
an array of areas, such as medical diagnostic imaging and explosives
detection.
The goal of tomographic X-ray diraction (XRD) imaging is to
determine the microscopic structure of a macroscopic object.
X-rays are particularly well-suited for this task because they are
widely available and match perfectly the spatial scales of the
problem: they can penetrate bulk objects while still interacting
with the object at the atomic scale. A number of approaches
based on dierent X-ray contrast mechanisms have therefore
been developed to obtain information about the material
properties of an object, including uorescence,
1
hyperspectral
transmission,
2
inelastic scatter,
3
phase contrast,
4
and coherent
scatter imaging.
5
Of these techniques, coherent scatter imaging
stands out because of its capacity to provide material-specic
signatures over large volumes and a broad range of material
types.
Despite employing dierent implementation strategies,
coherent scatter imaging methods such as selected volume
tomography (SVT),
6
coherent scatter computed tomography
(CSCT),
79
and kinetic depth eect X-ray diraction (KDEXRD)
10
typically involve ltering the incident illumination either spec-
trally (e.g., to a quasi-monochromatic distribution) or spatially
(e.g., to either a pencil or fan beam). This ltering is used to
produce a well-conditioned (i.e., invertible) signal, but has the
unfortunate consequence of drastically reducing the coherent
scatter signal. This fact, combined with the intrinsically small
scatter rate, results in the apparent necessity of either prohibi-
tively bright X-ray sources or long scan times ranging from
minutes to hours.
11
To overcome this challenge and reduce scan times, one must
increase the rate at which one acquires information. One way to
accomplish this is to maximize the information gained per
detected photon. This amounts to using high-eciency, low-
noise detectors with good spatial, temporal, and energy reso-
lution.
12
Another approach involves increasing the scatter signal
by using brighter sources, employing multiple sources,
13
or
increasing the parallelism of the measurement.
14,15
While par-
allelization is crucial for increasing scan rates for a xed source
conguration, one runs the risk of reducing the information per
photon through poor conditioning or a reduced signal to noise
ratio (SNR).
Recent developments in the eld of computational imaging
have obviated the seemingly fundamental tradeo between
speed and performance through the introduction of coded
aperture imaging and nonlinear inversion strategies.
16
Following the successful implementation of these ideas in a
variety of areas,
17,18
we have recently demonstrated coded
aperture X-ray imaging.
1923
In these systems, a coded aperture
placed between the object and detector encodes angular infor-
mation about the X-ray propagation direction to enable well-
conditioned, multiplexed measurements.
Building on these coded aperture techniques, we introduce
in this paper a new measurement architecture that enables real-
time estimation of the material properties of an object
throughout its volume. We realize simultaneously massive
parallelism with high information rates by using a coded
aperture to structure the illumination of a full cone beam and
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC,
USA. E-mail: dbrady@duke.edu
Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI:
10.1039/c3an01641b
Cite this: Analyst, 2014, 139, 709
Received 30th August 2013
Accepted 4th December 2013
DOI: 10.1039/c3an01641b
www.rsc.org/analyst
This journal is The Royal Society of Chemistry 2014 Analyst, 2014, 139, 709713 | 709
Analyst
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acquiring time-resolved scatter data using energy-sensitive
detectors as the target object moves relative to the source. This
scheme, referred to as structured illumination coherent scatter
imaging (SICSI), is mechanically simple and implementable in a
table-top conguration using standard equipment. In addition,
parallelization via structured illumination is compatible with
previously studied scatter- and transmission-based imaging
schemes. As a proof-of-concept experiment, we use SICSI to
demonstrate XRD imaging of a planar object slice and investi-
gate the dependence of the imaging performance on the inci-
dent X-ray ux.
To explain SICSI, we consider the general schematic shown in
Fig. 1. At least one X-ray source illuminates a high-transmission
coded aperture prior to interacting with the object such that the
X-rays incident on the object are spectrally unltered and
minimally spatially ltered. While removing fully the source
spatial ltering would maximize the total number of scattered
photons, it necessarily precludes their measurement, as the
presence of the bright primary beam makes measurement of the
relatively weak coherent scatter signal impossible. Thus, while
the generated information is high, the detectable content is low.
The purpose of the coded aperture, which introduces a position-
dependent modulation of the illumination, is therefore twofold:
it enables measurement of the scatter signal by removing
primary beam from the detector plane and conditions the
inherently-multiplexed scatter signal such that one can invert
the measured signal to recover the object properties.
20,21
In this
way, the coded aperture acts to eectively add information to the
measurement and thereby allows one to use a large fraction of
the full polychromatic cone beam for XRD imaging.
In addition to structured illumination, SICSI requires rela-
tive motion of the source and object (e.g., rotational or trans-
lational motion). As the object passes through the X-rays, each
object voxel is illuminated N times from a variety of dierent
incident angles. This multiplicity of illumination leads to an
N-fold reduction in the ux required in any single primary
beam, which results in either lower necessary incident photon
uxes or faster scan times. At the same time, the angular
diversity of the illumination combined with the known coded
aperture pattern results in a scatter signal whose spatio-
temporal-spectral structure identies uniquely the object's
material composition at each voxel. As an added advantage,
illuminating the object from a variety of angles mitigates some
of the challenges associated with texturing and helps ensure an
accurate measurement of the object's local molecular structure.
Finally, we employ an array of detector pixels downstream
from the object to collect the scattered photons. While the
choice of detector parameters depends on the details of the
source conguration, coded aperture pattern, and object
motion, the detector elements should have sucient temporal,
spatial, and energy resolution to match the desired image
resolution. In addition, to mitigate the eects of multiplexing
noise, the detector elements should have high quantum e-
ciency and be shot-noise limited in order to maximize the SNR
per photon as well as the overall photon eciency of the system.
In order to understand how this schemes works in more
detail, we consider Bragg's law
qh
1
2d

E
hc
sinq=2; (1)
which relates the properties of a scattered X-ray to the micro-
scopic structure of the object. Here q and E are the X-ray deec-
tion angle and energy, respectively, h is Planck's constant, c is the
speed of light in vacuum, q is related to the momentum trans-
ferred to the photon upon scattering, and d is the eective lattice
spacing of the object. By recording the intensity of scattered
photons originating froma given object voxel at dierent E and q,
one recovers the coherent scatter formfactor f, which is sucient
to identify uniquely the object's material composition.
5,24
While
many schemes designed to measure f keep either E or q xed as
the other parameter is scanned, SICSI involves the simultaneous
measurement of scatter from many object voxels while allowing
both E and q to take on a variety of values. This multiplexing leads
to a highly-parallel measurement in which the information
content per source photon and detector pixel is high.
We validate experimentally the SICSI concept by estimating
the material composition of a planar slice of an object using
only a single detector element. As shown in Fig. 2a, we use a
single X-ray source (Varian model G1593BI, operated at 125 keV
and I
s
25 mA) and enforce linear translational motion of the
object along the x direction. To structure the illumination, we
place a coded aperture consisting of a periodic series of 1.5 mm
diameter holes separated by 3 mm (center-to-center distance) at
distance z
m
548 mm from the source. We place the object(s)
on a motorized translation stage that is oriented along the
x-direction and moves with velocity v. Finally, we use a single
energy-sensitive pixel (Amptek model XR100T) with a full width
at half maximum (FWHM) energy resolution of 12 keV located
at z
d
1030 mm from the source to record the scattered X-rays.
We choose the temporal resolution to be Dt dx/v, where v is
the velocity of the object and dx 0.5 mm is the distance over
which the object moves during a single frame. The raw data
therefore consists of the time- and energy-resolved
Fig. 1 SICSI schematic for the general case of three-dimensional XRD
imaging using a cone beam showing the key system components:
X-ray source(s), a coded aperture, moving object, and detector(s).
710 | Analyst, 2014, 139, 709713 This journal is The Royal Society of Chemistry 2014
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measurements of the scattered X-ray intensity at a single posi-
tion in space (see Fig. 2b).
We obtain the results in Fig. 2c from Fig. 2b using a recon-
struction algorithm and a forward model that takes into
account the physics of coherent scatter and the experimental
system geometry. To implement this model numerically, we
create a discrete forward matrix in which each column corre-
sponds to the impulse response of a point object. If the
measurements are noise free and the columns of the forward
matrix are orthogonal, then the object can be reconstructed by
simply correlating the measurements with the columns of the
forward matrix. Since the measurements are oen noisy
because of the statistics of the photon counting process and the
columns of the forward matrix are not orthogonal because of
the involved physics, we need more sophisticated algorithms to
recover the underlying object.
In this work, we model the noise using Poisson statistics and
use a maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation algorithm to
recover the object.
25
Given knowledge of the discrete forward
matrix and measurements, the MAP algorithm nds an esti-
mate that is the best t to the measured data and is also
piecewise smooth. This smoothness assumption along the
spatial and spectral coordinates of the object enforces our prior
knowledge about the object and enables us to recover more
object voxels than the number of measurements. The capacity
to estimate more unknowns than the number of measurements
can further reduce the required scan time compared to
conventional methods, and represents the potential for
compressive inference in X-ray imaging.
We note that the measurement described in Fig. 2 is also
compressive in the sense that the dimensionality of the object
exceeds that of the detector (i.e., we estimate a three-dimen-
sional object using a two-dimensional detector). Nevertheless,
the measurement is still well-conditioned such that each point
in the object space maps onto a unique signal in the measure-
ment space. For example, the absolute time at which the scatter
signal appears at the detector belies the object's position along
x. Similarly, the z-dependence of the structured illumination
yields scatter signals with dierent temporal modulation
frequencies for objects at dierent ranges. Finally, the slope of
the recorded signal in Et space, given knowledge of the spatial
location of the object, allows one to associate the signal inten-
sity with a given value of q via eqn (1). The presence of the coded
aperture therefore increases the eective dimensionality of the
detector and allows us to encode the three unknown object
parameters x, z, and q into the shape of the signal in Et space.
Thus, while one may choose to employ a dierent detector
geometry so as to avoid operating in the compressive regime,
this result demonstrates the ecacy and utility of SICSI.
By using the procedure described above, we image experi-
mentally the form factors of several dierent objects located
within a plane and show the results in Fig. 3. We consider rst a
single, 4 mm wide by 8 mm thick vial of aluminum powder.
While we estimate the three-dimensional, position-dependent
form factor f(q, x, z), we show here only cross sections of the full
data cube. To locate the object, we consider rst the normalized
correlation
26
between the estimated and reference form factors
at each position (Fig. 3a). We obtain the reference form factors
by performing standard angle-dispersive XRD of an object with
known location using a Panalytical XPert PRO diractometer
(8 keV Cu source with a 20 minute scan time). To complement
this spatial map, we compare in Fig. 3b the reference form
factor to that estimated via SICSI at the location corresponding
to the center of the object.
We extend this result to the case of multiple objects placed at
dierent locations. Fig. 3c shows the correlation map obtained
by comparing the estimated form factor at each location to that
obtained by XRD for a 4.6 by 9 mmvial of graphite powder and 4
Fig. 2 Schematic of the SICSI scheme realized experimentally (a) A structured fan beamilluminates an object and the scatter is measured using a
single, energy-sensitive pixel. (b) The raw data consists of a set of modulated curves in energy-time space, which we invert to estimate (c) the
coherent scatter form factor at every object voxel.
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by 9 mm sheet of Teon. The blue and red regions reect the
presence of graphite and teon, respectively. In addition,
Fig. 3d and e display the form factors obtained via standard
XRD and SICSI at the object location.
In general, Fig. 3 demonstrates that this simple, single-pixel
SICSI realization provides a reasonable estimate of an unknown
object's location and material properties. More specically,
Figs. 3b, d, and e show that the reconstruction algorithm
faithfully estimates the dominant peaks of the objects but fails
to recover some of the tiny peaks in the reference spectra and
can produce spurious peaks at some q locations. Such artifacts
can arise through a variety of mechanisms. For example, error
in the model due to unmodeled physics or inaccuracies in our
representation of the geometry and system components can
result in slight disagreements between the predicted and
measured data. Noise also impacts the delity of the estimated
object. Since the reconstruction process tries to eliminate the
eects of noise, it may oversmooth or undersmooth the results,
which can lead to blurred and/or spurious peaks.
Beyond these eects, there are fundamental limits to the
imaging performance based on measurement uncertainties.
The detector's energy and temporal resolution as well as the
spatial extent of the detector pixel and code features, for
example, result in blurring of the estimated object. Using an
approach similar to that described in Greenberg et al.,
22
we
derive an estimate for the resolution of the experimental system
shown in Fig. 2 in the absence of noise. While the results are
position- and material-dependent, we nd that the resolution in
range, cross-range, and momentum transfer are Dz 10 mm,
Dx 1 mm, and Dq 0.01

A
1
, respectively. These values agree
with the results shown in Fig. 3 and are comparable to those
found using alternative techniques.
68
With this resolution, we
nd a correlation of greater than 0.9 between the estimated and
reference coherent scatter form factors. This degree of agree-
ment, when used in conjunction with a library of reference form
factors, enables one to perform classication or object identi-
cation, which is sucient for many applications.
23
To address the issue of imaging speed, we consider next the
dependence of the estimation delity on incident ux. To
accomplish this experimentally, we image repeatedly the same
object using dierent scan rates. We nd that the imaging
performance remains fairly uniform down to approximately
10 mAs, where we dene mAs h I
s
Dt. This corresponds to an
object moving at v 1.25 mm s
1
using I
s
25 mA. We note
that, though, the detector collects only 0.1% of the coherently
scattered photons. One can therefore reduce the scan time by
several orders of magnitude by simply recording a larger frac-
tion of the scattered photons and/or using a higher ux source.
More importantly, the scan time needed to image a three-
dimensional volume is very similar to that of a single plane by
virtue of SICSI's inherent parallelism.
In summary, we have described a new paradigm for tomo-
graphic XRD imaging that seeks to maximize the information
content per source photon. We accomplish this by structuring
the illumination and recording the time-dependent scattered
X-ray distribution as the object moves relative to the source. The
benets of this approach stem from enabling one to exploit the
majority of emitted source photons while measuring scatter
Fig. 3 (a) Position-dependent correlation map (thresholded at 0.75) between the estimated and true form factors for a 4 8 mm vial of
aluminumpowder centered at (x, z) (3, 613) mm from the source. (b) Formfactor associated with aluminum powder with the position x 3
and z 613 mm. (c) Position-dependent correlation map (thresholded at 0.75) between the estimated and true formfactors for a 4.6 9 mmvial
of graphite powder and a 4 8 mm block of Teon centered at (x, z) (3, 613) and (5, 603) mm, respectively. (d) and (e) Form factors for
graphite powder and Teon associated with the positions (x, z) (3, 613) and (5, 603) mm, respectively. We show both the form factors
obtained via standard XRD (blue dashed line) and estimated using SICSI (red). The data was acquired using 100 mAs per integration time.
712 | Analyst, 2014, 139, 709713 This journal is The Royal Society of Chemistry 2014
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from all object voxels in parallel. Using SICSI, we demonstrate
experimentally the ability to image the material composition at
every object location within a plane using a single detector pixel.
While the proof-of-principle experiment described here
indicates the potential for SICSI, much work should be done to
fully take advantage of it. For example, one can use a linear or
sparse two-dimensional array of energy-sensitive detectors to
measure the scatter from a cone beam structured with a two-
dimensional coded aperture. This would allow for imaging of
the full four-dimensional object (i.e., three spatial and one
material dimensions). In addition, one can employ sources with
higher tube currents and voltages as well as higher-resolution
detectors
12,27
to enhance the measured data rate.
SICSI also oers advantages for performing feature-specic
imaging. The fact that each object voxel is illuminated multiple
times means that it is straightforward (and potentially
extremely advantageous) to implement adaptivity in the
measurement process. Because one obtains some information
from each object voxel at multiple points throughout the scan,
one can use the information obtained in previous measure-
ments to inform subsequent measurements. For example, one
can vary the rate or direction of the object motion, code pattern,
or source properties in an object-dependent way to yield the
optimal image under a given set of constraints (e.g., a xed
source power, dose budget, scan time, or available detector
coverage).
Finally, we note that SICSI need not be a standalone tech-
nique. Rather, one can integrate the coding strategies described
in this paper with CSCT, KDEXRD, or CACSSI to reduce the
required scan time or source ux, or simply enhance the sys-
tem's sensitivity. Similarly, this scheme is compatible with
transmission-based tomosynthesis, which can greatly enhance
the reconstruction quality for complex, optically thick objects.
24
Thus, given SICSI's capacity to eciently record microscopic
structural information throughout bulk objects, this method
has a range of potential applications, including biological and
industrial imaging,
28
chemical analysis,
29
and the detection of
explosives and contraband via security screening.
30
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the nancial support from the U. S.
Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology
Directorate under contract HSHQDC-11-C-00083. We also thank
Ehsan Samei for use of his technical resources.
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