A cavity-based x-ray free-electron laser (CBXFEL) is a possible future direction in the development of fully coherent x-ray sources. One of the challenges of a CBXFEL is the requirement of the three-dimensional overlapping of the μm-sized electron beam with the circulating μm-sized x-ray beam in an x-ray cavity of tens or hundreds of meters long. In the framework of the CBXFEL R&D collaborative project of Argonne National Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and Spring-8, we present here the development of an x-ray diagnostics system for an accurate alignment of x-ray beams in the CBXFEL cavity. All the designed diagnostics components have been fully characterized at the Advanced Photon Source to demonstrate a sub-μrad-angular and μm-spatial alignment accuracy for the CBXFEL cavity.
The motion control, data acquisition and analysis system for APS Slope Measuring Profiler was implemented using the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS). EPICS was designed as a framework with software tools and applications that provide a software infrastructure used in building distributed control systems to operate devices such as particle accelerators, large experiments and major telescopes. EPICS was chosen to implement the APS Slope Measuring Profiler because it is also applicable to single purpose systems. The control and data handling capability available in the EPICS framework provides the basic functionality needed for high precision X-ray mirror measurement. Those built in capabilities include hardware integration of high-performance motion control systems (3-axis gantry and tip-tilt stages), mirror measurement devices (autocollimator, laser spot camera) and temperature sensors. Scanning the mirror and taking measurements was accomplished with an EPICS feature (the sscan record) which synchronizes motor positioning with measurement triggers and data storage. Various mirror scanning modes were automatically configured using EPICS built-in scripting. EPICS tools also provide low-level image processing (areaDetector). Operation screens were created using EPICS-aware GUI screen development tools.
Synchrotron microtomography typically uses monochromatic beams, because these avoid beam-hardening artifacts and
allow imaging above and below the absorption edges of specific elements. However, the monochromator greatly reduces
the flux on the sample, and thus increases the data collection time. An alternative is to eliminate the monochromator,
instead using absorbers to remove low-energy x-rays and reflection from a mirror to remove high-energy x-rays. This
produces a pink beam with a large energy bandwidth and more than 1000 times greater flux. This is useful for dynamic
studies, where an entire 3-D dataset can be collected in just a few seconds. We have implemented pink beam
tomography at the 13-BM-D beamline at the GeoSoilEnviroCARS sector 13 at the Advanced Photon Source. A key
component of such a system is a high-speed detector that can collect over 100 frames/s with excellent signal/noise. We
are using a new generation of inexpensive CMOS detectors with very low read noise, large full-well capacity, and high
speed. The system performs well, and first experiments in studying fluid imbibition and drainage are presented.
Computers have changed remarkably in just the last 2-3 years. Memory is now very inexpensive, as little as $10/GB, or less than $1000 for 96GB. Computers with 8 or 12 cores are now inexpensive, starting at less than $3,000. This means that affordable workstations are in principle now capable of processing large tomography datasets. But for the most part tomography reconstruction software has not changed to take advantage of these new capabilities. Most installations use clusters of Linux machines, spreading the work over computers running multiple processes. It is significantly simpler and cheaper to run a single process that spreads the job over multiple threads running on multiple cores. tomoRecon is a new multi-threaded library for such tomography data reconstruction. It consists of only 545 lines of C++ code, on top of the ~800 lines in the Gridrec reconstruction code. The performance on a single modern workstation significantly exceeds dedicated clusters currently in use at synchrotron beamlines.
A facility for x-ray computed microtomography (CMT) is operating as a national user facility for earth and
environmental sciences research on the bending magnet beamline at the GeoSoilEnviroCARS sector at the Advanced
Photon Source (APS). We present an analysis of the source of noise in the reconstructed data, compared to data on
similar samples from another instrument. We also report on careful characterization of the CCD detector, on new highspeed
data collection strategies, and applications to high-pressure tomography.
A facility for x-ray computed microtomography (CMT) is operating as a national user facility for earth and
environmental sciences research on the bending magnet beamline at the GeoSoilEnviroCARS sector at the Advanced
Photon Source (APS). The APS bending magnet has a critical energy of 20 keV, and thus provides high flux at photon
energies up to 100 keV, making it well suited to imaging a wide range of earth materials up to several cm in size. The
beamline is equipped with a Si (111) double-crystal monochromator covering the energy range from 5 to 70 keV with
beam sizes up to 50mm wide and 6mm high. The transmitted x-rays are imaged with a single crystal YAG or CdWO4
scintillator, a microscope objective and a 1300x1030 pixel 12-bit 5MHz CCD detector. The maximum spatial resolution
is under 1.5 μm in both the transmission radiographs and the reconstructed slices. Data collection times for full 3-D
datasets range from 5-60 minutes. This facility has been used for a wide range of studies, including multiphase fluids in
porous media, high-pressure studies, meteorites, and hyper-accumulating plants. We present recent technical
improvements in the system, which include improved optics for samples larger than 5mm, significant reduction of ring
artifacts, and correction of mechanical errors in the rotation stage.
X-ray fluorescence computed tomography (XFCT) allows for the reconstruction of the distribution of elements within a sample from measurements of fluorescence x rays produced by irradiation of the sample with monochromatic synchrotron radiation. XFCT is not a transmission tomography modality, but rather a stimulated emission tomography modality; thus correction for attenuation of the incident and fluorescence photons is essential if accurate images are to be obtained. This is challenging because the attenuation map is, in general, known only at the stimulating beam energy and not at the various fluorescence energies of interest. We make use of empirically fitted analytic expressions for x-ray attenuation coefficients to express the unknown attenuation maps as linear combinations of known quantities and the unknown elemental concentrations of interest. We then develop an iterative image reconstruction algorithm based on penalized-likelihood methods that have been developed for medical emission tomography. Studies with numerical phantoms indicate that the approach is able to produce qualitatively and quantitatively accurate reconstructed images even in the face of severe attenuation. We also apply the method to real synchrotron-acquired data and demonstrate a marked improvement in image quality relative to filtered backprojection reconstruction.
A facility for x-ray computed microtomography (CMT) is operating as a national user facility for earth and environmental sciences research on the bending magnet beamline at the GeoSoilEnviroCARS sector at the Advanced Photon Source (APS). The APS bending magnet has a critical energy of 20 keV, and thus provides high flux at photon energies up to 100 keV, making it well suited to imaging a wide range of earth materials up to several cm in size. The beamline is equipped with a Si (111) double-crystal monochromator covering the energy range from 5 to 70 keV with beam sizes up to 50mm wide and 6mm high. The transmitted x-rays are imaged with a single crystal YAG scintillator, a microscope objective and a 1300x1030 pixel 12-bit 5MHz CCD detector. The maximum spatial resolution is under 2 microns in both the transmission radiographs and the reconstructed slices. Data collection times for full 3-D datasets range from 5-60 minutes. This facility has been used for a wide range of studies, including multiphase fluids in porous media, high-pressure studies, meteorites, and hyper-accumulating plants.
The conversion of 3D data sets of x-ray absorption images into 3D composition maps requires accurate mass absorption values, high-quality images, and a robust fitting algorithm. We evaluate the status of convenient x-ray absorption databases, the impact of various CCD parameters and imaging strategies (minimal vs over-determined), and styles of least-squares fits of the images (optionally including volume constraints). Concerns raised include the impact of NEXAFS features and limited CCD dynamic range. In the absence of these effects, the reduction of images to composition is fast and robust, as tested with simulations based on element-labeled Shepp-Logan phantoms. These studies allow one to evaluate a recent experiment in which synchrotron X-ray tomography is used to image a multicomponent sample. Those samples consisted of a mixture containing high-impact polystyrene (HIPS) and a two-component flame retardant, a brominated phthalimide dimer and a synergist, antimony oxide (Sb2O3). Complete tomography data sets were acquired at 3.34 micron spatial resolution using seven X-ray energies in the range of 12 to 40 keV, closely spanning Br and Sb 1s electron binding energies at 13.474 and 30.491 keV, respectively.
Three silicate glasses were hydrated at high pressure and then heated at atmospheric pressure to exsolve the water into bubbles and create foams. The bubble size distribution in these foams was measured by x-ray microtomography on the GSECARS BM-13 beamline at the Advanced Photon Source. The bubble area distributions were measured in two dimensions using the image slices produced from the microtomography and the software ImageJ. The bubble volume distributions were measured from the three-dimensional tomographic images with the BLOB3D software. We found that careful analysis of the microtomography data in both two and three dimensions was necessary to avoid the physically unrealistic, experimental artifact of identifying and counting many small bubbles whose surfaces were not defined by a septum of glass. When this artifact was avoided the foams demonstrated power-law distributions of bubble sizes in both two and three dimensions. Conversion of the power-law exponents for bubble areas measured in two dimensions to exponents for bubble volumes usually agreed with the measured three dimensional volume exponents. Furthermore, the power-law distributions for bubble volumes typically agree with multiple theories of bubble growth, all of which yield an exponent of 1 for the cumulative bubble volume distribution. The measured bubble volume distributions with exponents near 0.3 can be explained by diffusive growth as proposed by other authors, but distributions with exponents near 1.4 remain to be explained and are the subject of continuing research on the effects of water concentration and melt viscosity on foaming behavior.
A facility for x-ray computed microtomography (CMT) has been commissioned on the bending magnet beamline at the GeoSoilEnviroCARS sector at the Advanced Photon Source (APS). The APS bending magnet has a critical energy of 20 keV, and thus provides high flux at photon energies up to 100 keV, making it well suited to imaging a wide range of earth materials up to several cm in size. The current apparatus uses a Si (220) channel-cut monochromator covering the energy range from 5 to 35 keV with beam sizes up to 18 mm wide and 4 mm high. The transmitted x-rays are imaged with a single crystal YAG scintillator, a microscope objective and a 1242 X 1152 pixel fast CCD detector. The system spatial resolution is about 3 microns in both the transmission radiographs and the reconstructed slices. Data collection times are approximately 30 minutes. This facility has been used to conduct a number of preliminary studies of earth materials, including inclusion in diamonds, pores in waste repository rocks and fossils. Fluorescence tomography has been conducted on the companion undulator beamline, where we have imaged the internal trace element distribution in interplanetary dust particles.
We present the optical designs, modeling, bender design and test results of x-ray micro- focusing optics used to micro-focus monochromatic undulator x-rays at the Advanced Photon Source (APS). The system uses two 100mm long, actively bent mirrors in a Kirkpatrick Baez arrangement. A detailed analytical model of the system's performance is described along with ray tracing result. A description of the integration of the benders into a compete micro- focusing system is provided. The system is easy to setup and use and is presently used in earth science research coupled to techniques such as micro-spectroscopy, fluorescence microprobe, and energy dispersive diffraction. The optics' performance is measured on the GeoSoilEnviroCARS microprobe experimental station at APS sector 13. Focusing tests using 10keV undulator x-rays result in a double focused beam with a horizontal and vertical full width at half maximum of 0.80micrometers X 0.85micrometers , and flux density gain greater than 105.
We present the test results of micro-focusing a continuous spectrum (4 KeV - 65 keV) of x rays using two, 100 mm long, actively bent mirrors in a Kirkpatrick-Baez geometry. The mirrors are figured by applying in situ two different moments on the ends resulting in a surface figure that approximates an ellipse. We have demonstrated the ability to doubly focus NSLS bending magnet x rays from 4 KeV to 13 KeV to a spot size less than 4 microns in diameter with a net gain of 2000 over a similar size beam produced with slits. In the bending magnet test the beam was focused in the vertical direction with a high quality rhodium coated Si mirror with a rms surface roughness and slope error less than 2 angstrom and 2 (mu) rad, respectively. The horizontal mirror consisted of uncoated float glass with significantly greater roughness and slope error. This combination of mirrors worked extremely well, pointing the direction for inexpensive micro-focusing optics. Vertical focusing tests were also performed using only the high quality Si mirror. On the bending magnet, x rays were focused to 30 KeV using an incidence angle of 2 mrad achieving a best focus of 2.5 microns FWHM, resulting in a net gain of 91. Additional high energy focusing tests were carried out at the NSLS superconducting wiggler beamline X17. In this case a continuous x-ray spectrum was vertically focused using the Si mirror with an energy cutoff of 65 KeV (at an incident angle of 1 mrad) achieving a focal spot size of 3.3 microns FWHM and a net gain of 20.
X rays have been used extensively in the study of hard tissue such as bone. The x rays used are typically of energy 50 keV, which have an absorption depth of approximately 1.5 cm in hard tissue. These x rays are used for creating x-ray shadowgraphs (or radiographs) of bones where the finest details recorded are of the order of a few tenths of a millimeter. However, due to the advent of x-ray sources which are energy tunable, and the availability of high resolution x-ray optics, an entirely new range of contrast is now possible along with resolution down to a few tens of nanometers. These new x-ray sources and optics have been combined to create a variety of x-ray microscopes which are now being used in a range of unique applications.
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