Edge illumination x-ray phase contrast simulations using the CAD-ASTRA toolbox

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging and Instrumentation
• Materials Science and Engineering

Background:

• Edge illumination X-ray phase contrast imaging (XPCI) offers superior contrast for low-absorbing materials and reveals microstructural details via dark field contrast.
• Accurate and efficient XPCI simulation is crucial for applications like non-destructive testing and inline inspection, especially when comparing scanned samples to simulated references.
• Existing simulators often use computationally expensive Monte Carlo methods or wave-optics, leading to long simulation times and limited compatibility with efficient Computer-Aided Design (CAD) models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel, efficient simulation framework for edge illumination XPCI.
• To enable the use of CAD models for XPCI simulations, improving integration into inspection pipelines.
• To accelerate XPCI simulation times compared to current state-of-the-art methods.

Main Methods:

• Introduction of an edge illumination XPCI simulation framework integrated with the CAD-ASTRA toolbox.
• Utilized GPU-accelerated ray tracing within a geometric optics framework for efficient x-ray projection simulation from CAD models.
• Validated the edge illumination implementation and benchmarked its performance against the GATE Monte Carlo simulator.

Main Results:

• The new framework achieves simulation speeds up to three orders of magnitude faster than the GATE Monte Carlo simulator.
• The simulations maintain high accuracy, comparable to results obtained from established methods.
• The framework efficiently handles CAD models, overcoming limitations of previous simulators.

Conclusions:

• The developed edge illumination XPCI simulation framework offers a significant speed improvement over existing methods.
• The integration with CAD models and the use of GPU-accelerated ray tracing make it suitable for industrial applications like non-destructive testing.
• This advancement facilitates faster and more accurate virtual prototyping and analysis in XPCI-based inspection.