Extending reference scan drift correction to high-magnification high-cone-angle tomography

The reference scan method is a simple yet powerful method for measuring spatial drift of the x-ray spot during a low-cone-angle μ-CT experiment. As long as the drift is smooth, and occurring on a time scale that is long compared to the acquisition time of each projection, this method provides a way to compensate for the drift by applying 2D in-plane translations to the radiographs. Here we show that this compensation may be extended to the regime of high-magnification, high-cone-angle CT experiments where source drift perpendicular to the detector plane can cause significant magnification changes throughout the acquisition.