Phase and Intensity X-ray Linearization with Dark Field (PIXLD): A Fast Algorithm for Low Coherence X-ray Phase-Contrast and Dark Field Imaging Compatible with Medical and Industrial X-ray Sources

Both X-ray phase-contrast and dark field imaging have the potential to significantly advance medical and industrial imaging. Phase-contrast can offer a significant improvement in contrast compared to conventional imaging for low-density materials. Dark-field imaging offers an additional contrast mechanism, based on internal sub-resolution micro-texture. Most existing phasecontrast and dark-field techniques rely on the highcoherence from synchrotron or low power microfocus sources, or expensive, precisely aligned, gratings. These restrictions have limited their widespread adoption. Additionally, many of the algorithms used to produce these images are computationally costly, which limits the ability to perform high-throughput imaging. In this work, we demonstrate a method that produces attenuation, differential phase-contrast and dark-field images simultaneously, by utilizing a simple stainless-steel wire mesh to pattern the x-ray beam, and an efficient linear algorithm to extract images from reference-pattern distortions in the presence of a sample. We demonstrated compatibility with low coherence sources by acquiring differential phase-contrast and dark-field images with a 120 μm source. The implementation of our algorithm also produces a 10-fold improvement in reconstruction times over related techniques.