A step towards 6D WAXD tensor tomography

Abstract

X-ray scattering/diffraction tensor tomography techniques are promising methods to acquire the 3D texture information of heterogeneous biological tissues at micrometre resolution. However, the methods suffer from a long overall acquisition time due to multi-dimensional scanning across real and reciprocal space. Here, a new approach is introduced to obtain 3D reciprocal information of each illuminated scanning volume using mathematic modeling, which is equivalent to a physical scanning procedure for collecting the full reciprocal information required for voxel reconstruction. The virtual reciprocal scanning scheme was validated by a simulated 6D wide-angle X-ray diffraction tomography experiment. The theoretical validation of the method represents an important technological advancement for 6D diffraction tensor tomography and a crucial step towards pervasive applications in the characterization of heterogeneous materials.

Keywords

• computed tomography
• wide-angle x-ray diffraction
• computational modeling
• structure prediction
• virtual reciprocal-space scans
• 6d tomography
• diffraction tensors
• voxel reconstruction