X-rays have been used for imaging ever since they were discovered by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen in the year 1895. One of the most attractive characteristics of X-rays is their penetration capability, which allows non-invasive probing of the specimen’s internal structure. In the 1970s, Allan M. Cormack and Godfrey N. Hounsfield brought X-ray radiography into a new era with the ground breaking development of the computed tomography (CT) technique. Using this technique, the 3D structure of the sample can be reconstructed numerically from a number of projective images acquired in different viewing angles.
Over the past few decades, x-ray microscopy has made great impact in a wide range of scientific research areas and clinical applications. With the technological developments in X-ray components and improvements in imaging algorithms, the X-ray tomography technique is now capable of covering a wide range of length scales using different hardware configurations and utilizing different contrast mechanisms. In particular, when it is coupled with the synchrotron facilities, we have witnessed a great success of the technical development and the scientific application of the multiscale and multimodel x-ray microscopy.
Our group has been pushing the frontier of the methodology in this field. We carry out studies in several different aspects including the tomographic reconstruction algorithms, the phase retrieval methods, the image processing methods, the post-reconstruction analysis, etc. Our efforts in this field lay a solid groundwork for the scientific applications of the multiscale and multimodality x-ray microscopy.
