Three-dimensional imaging of flat natural and cultural heritage objects by a Compton scattering modality

Characterization and interpretation of flat ancient material objects, such as those found in archaeology, paleoenvironments, paleontology, and cultural heritage, have remained a challenging task to perform by means of conventional x-ray tomography methods due to their anisotropic morphology and flat...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of electronic imaging 2017-01, Vol.26 (1), p.011026-011026
Main Authors: Guerrero Prado, Patricio, Nguyen, Mai K, Dumas, Laurent, Cohen, Serge X
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bioengineering
Engineering Sciences
General Mathematics
Imaging
Life Sciences
Mathematics
Signal and Image processing
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Characterization and interpretation of flat ancient material objects, such as those found in archaeology, paleoenvironments, paleontology, and cultural heritage, have remained a challenging task to perform by means of conventional x-ray tomography methods due to their anisotropic morphology and flattened geometry. To overcome the limitations of the mentioned methodologies for such samples, an imaging modality based on Compton scattering is proposed in this work. Classical x-ray tomography treats Compton scattering data as noise in the image formation process, while in Compton scattering tomography the conditions are set such that Compton data become the principal image contrasting agent. Under these conditions, we are able, first, to avoid relative rotations between the sample and the imaging setup, and second, to obtain three-dimensional data even when the object is supported by a dense material by exploiting backscattered photons. Mathematically this problem is addressed by means of a conical Radon transform and its inversion. The image formation process and object reconstruction model are presented. The feasibility of this methodology is supported by numerical simulations.
ISSN:1017-9909
1560-229X
DOI:10.1117/1.JEI.26.1.011026