Speakers
Kaye Morgan
One of the simplest experimental approaches to phase-contrast x-ray imaging is a propagation-based set-up, where the x-ray wavefield self-interferes during propagation over some distance from a sample to a detector. Unlike other phase-contrast imaging set-ups, propagation-based set-ups have not been able to capture a dark-field image until recently. In the last year, we have demonstrated two possible propagation-based approaches to dark-field imaging. These approaches are based on our proposed 'X-ray Fokker-Planck Equation', which describes how both phase and dark-field effects emerge during the propagation of an x-ray wavefield. Using this equation as a model, propagation-based images from either a) two energies or b) two sample-to-detector distances can be used to extract sample thickness and dark-field images. We hope that these developments can inspire new approaches to phase and dark-field imaging that can be easily realised in laboratories, hospitals, and more broadly.
Prof Kaye Morgan is a physicist based at Monash University in Australia, working on new methods of x-ray imaging and applying these methods in biomedical research collaborations. Many of these applications have required high-speed imaging to capture biological function and avoid motion blur, and as a result, her group has focused on developing methods of x-ray phase and dark-field imaging that minimise the number of required exposures. This includes propagation-based imaging and some of the earliest work in speckle-tracking and single-grid imaging. Her experimental program has used conventional x-ray sources, the Munich Compact Light Source, and synchrotron sources, both around the world and across the road from Monash at the Australian Synchrotron. Her research program has been supported by a series of fellowships from the Australian Research Council (ARC), Veski, and the Technical University of Munich Institute for Advanced Studies, and project funding from ARC and the National Health and Medical Research Council.