Small angle scatter imaging from wide beam diffraction patterns.

In this paper we report on the extension of the technique of mapping small angle x-ray scatter (SAXS) across a soft material specimen several millimetres square. In the conventional SAXS mapping technique a pencil beam of x-rays is raster scanned over the specimen with the scatter pattern recorded from each point in the raster. In our technique a wide, parallel beam is used, speeding up the data collection time considerably. An image processing algorithm is used to separate the scatter pattern features from individual points along the line of the beam. To test the efficacy of the technique a phantom was constructed using gelatin and rat tail tendon collagen. Collagen fibres in the phantom were arranged in quarters horizontally, diagonally and vertically leaving one quarter with just gelatin. The phantom was used to collect both raster scanned sets of SAXS patterns spaced at 0.25 mm horizontally and vertically and also a wide beam data set. The width of the beam in this case was approximately 7 mm. Using the third-order diffraction of rat tail tendon intensity data were gathered from each SAXS pattern and used to construct a map. Data from the raster scan image and that from the wide beam are compared. Finally using a phantom made from dehydrated rat tail tendon and paraffin wax a tomographic slice constructed using data from SAXS patterns is shown.