A system for high-resolution x-ray phase-contrast imaging and tomography of biological specimens

A system for high-resolution X-ray diagnostics is presented. It consists of a microfocus X-ray source with spot size of 5 μm that is operated in the 10-90 kV range. The detector is a Ce:YAG crystal coupled to a CCD camera with 5μm pixel size and 1392x1040 format. The magnification of the optical coupling is chosen in the 1 to 4 range, giving a spatial resolving element of 5 to 20 μm. The sample to be acquired is mounted on a motorized rototranslation stage for the automatic acquisition of the X-tay views both for tomography and phase-contrast imaging. The sample is positioned half-way between the source and the detector. X-ray images show very high contrast due to phase effects in addition to absorption. Some images of biological specimens are presented to assess the capability of revealing very low differences in density due to the presence of phase contrast. A complete high-resolution tomography of a drosophila is presented.