Decoding the structure of granular and porous materials from speckled phase contrast X-ray images.

Imaging techniques for studying the structure of opaque, granular and porous materials are limited by temporal resolution and radiation dose. We present a technique for characterising the structure of such materials by decoding three dimensional structural information from single, propagation based phase contrast X-ray images. We demonstrate the technique by measuring the distribution of diameters of glass microspheres in packed samples. We also present synthetic data, which shows that our inverse method is stable and that accuracy is improved by phase contrast X-ray imaging. Compared to computed tomography, our technique has superior temporal resolution and lower radiation dose.