Use of image restoration and enhancement to improve x-ray pinhole camera resolution

Numerical image processing techniques are applied to the restoration of x-ray pinhole photographs of solid targets irradiated by intense relativistic electron beams. The numerical and analytic bases for image restoration are briefly described. An experimentally determined point-spread function for the pinhole camera is utilized to eliminate the effects of high-energy x-ray degradation of pinhole resolution. It is shown that penetration by hard x rays from filtered spectra through the pinhole edges can lead to apparent broadening of the electron-beam pinch on high-Z targets. Elimination of x-ray shine-through also permits determination of photon intensity from high-Z target ablation products, and improves spatial resolution of the x-ray source