High-speed X-ray ptychographic tomography

X-ray ptychography is a coherent scanning imaging technique widely used at synchrotron facilities for producing quantitative phase images beyond the resolution limit of conventional x-ray optics. The scanning nature of the technique introduces an inherent overhead to the collection at every scan position and limits the acquisition time of each 2D projection. The overhead associated with motion can be minimised with a continuous-scanning approach. Here we present an acquisition architecture based on continuous-scanning and up-triggering which allows to record ptychographic datasets at up to 9 kHz. We demonstrate the method by applying it to record 2D scans at up to 273 µm(2)/s and 3D scans of a (20 µm)(3) volume in less than three hours. We discuss the current limitations and the outlook toward the development of sub-second 2D acquisition and minutes-long 3D ptychographic tomograms.