Nondestructive material characterization of meteorites with synchrotron-based high energy x-ray phase micro-computed tomography

Synchrotron radiation based x-ray propagation-based micro-computed tomography (SRPCT) has been widely used to nondestructively access 3D structural information in many fields in the last decade. However, for strongly absorbed objects with small density-differential compositions, conventional SRPCT technique fails in providing high-contrast images for visualization of objects characteristic information except edge-enhancements at interfaces or boundaries of samples. In this study, we successfully employed the SRPCT technique with phase retrieval, the high energy x-ray phase-attenuation-duality (PAD) algorithm, into nondestructive material characterization of invaluable meteorite samples due to the greatly enhanced phase-contrast of different bulk material areas, as compared to conventional SRPCT on equal dose basis. Our experimental results demonstrated the PAD-SRPCT technique is superior to conventional SRPCT technique to access density and structure distributions of different meteorite compositions with high density resolution, owing to the striking contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR). In addition, a new mass-density measurement method was presented to estimate the mass density of different compositions in the meteorite sample based on the calibration of the imaging system. (paper)