Implementation of grain mapping by diffraction contrast tomography on a conventional laboratory tomography setup with various detectors

Laboratory-based diffraction contrast tomography (LabDCT) is a novel technique used to resolve grain orientations and shapes in three dimensions at the micrometre scale using laboratory X-ray sources, allowing the user to overcome the constraint of limited access to synchrotron facilities. To foster the development of this technique, the implementation of LabDCT is illustrated in detail using a conventional laboratory-based X-ray tomography setup, and it is shown that such implementation is possible with the two most common types of detectors: CCD and flat panel. As a benchmark, LabDCT projections were acquired on an AlCu alloy sample using the two types of detectors at different exposure times. Grain maps were subsequently reconstructed using the open-source grain reconstruction method reported in the authors’ previous work. To characterize the detection limit and the spatial resolution for the current implementation, the reconstructed LabDCT grain maps were compared with the map obtained from a synchrotron measurement, which is considered as ground truth. The results show that the final grain maps from measurements by the CCD and flat panel detector are similar and show comparable quality, while the CCD gives a much better contrast-to-noise ratio than the flat panel. The analysis of the grain maps reconstructed from measurements with different exposure times suggests that a grain map of comparable quality could be obtained in less than 1 h total acquisition time without a significant loss of grain reconstruction quality and indicates a clear potential for time-lapse LabDCT experiments. The current implementation is suggested to promote the generic use of the LabDCT technique for grain mapping on conventional tomography setups.