02 Apr Advantages Of Phase Contrast: A Few Examples

inCiTe™ is a world-first phase-contrast benchtop micro-CT. Using KA Imaging patented technology, this X-ray microscope excels at imaging materials that have poor X-ray absorption, such as biomaterials, polymer composites and other low-density samples. inCiTe is also the first commercial micro-CT to utilize BrillianSe™, the highest spatial resolution direct conversion X-ray detector in the world for hard X-rays, that allows for true unmagnified resolution down to 8μm.

Why phase-contrast?

When an object is placed in front of an X-ray source, the shadows, or projections, of the object can be captured by a detector in the background. Computed tomography, also known as CT, is the process of reconstructing an image representation of the object from its X-ray projections using computer algorithms.

The primary advantage of the phase-contrast paradigm is that when an object presents poor conventional absorption-contrast (e.g. soft biological tissue or other low-density materials such as polymers), contrast can instead be generated with higher sensitivity using phase-contrast techniques.

inCiTe™ achieves phase-contrast directly by free-space propagation of the X-ray beam, transforming X-ray phase changes due to the object into X-ray intensity variations at the detector.

The result is an image with much more detail, which wouldn’t be possible using conventional CT techniques.

Watch the video below to see some images and the results of inCiTe.

Contact us to learn more!