Feasibility of track-based multiple scattering tomography

We present a tomographic technique making use of a gigaelectronvolt electron beam for the measurement of the spatial material budget distribution of centimetre-sized objects. With simulation tools originating from high-energy physics applications, a test environment replicating a beam telescope is set up to measure the trajectory of electrons traversing a structured aluminium cube with 6 mm edge length. The variance of the deflection angle distribution of the electrons undergoing multiple Coulomb scattering at the aluminium cube serves as an estimator for the radon transform of the material budget distribution. Basing the sinogram on position-resolved estimators enables the reconstruction of the original object. We show the feasibility of the reconstruction of the three-dimensional material budget distribution of the aluminium cube by successively imaging two-dimensional distributions of the projected material budget under varying rotation angles. Using a filtered back projection, the reconstructed image yields edge resolutions of the order of (50±2) μm and contrasts of about 6.6±0.2 compared to air, offering a new technique in non-destructive material testing.