System Design and Evaluation of a Compact and High Energy X-ray Talbot-Lau Grating Interferometer for Industrial Applications

X-ray grating interferometry has been an active area of research in recent years. In particular, various studies have been carried out for the practical use of the x-ray grating interferometer in medical and industrial fields. For the commercialization of the system, it needs to be optimized for its application. In this study, we have developed a prototype of the compact high energy x-ray grating interferometer of which the high effective energy and compactness is of our primary feature of design. We have designed the Talbot-Lau x-ray interferometer in a symmetrical geometry with an effective energy of 54.3 keV. The system has a source-to-analyzer grating distance of 788.4 mm, which is compact enough for a commercial product. In a normal operation, it took less than ten seconds to acquire a set of phase stepping images. The acquired images had a maximum visibility of about 15%, which is relatively high compared with the visibilities of the other high-energy grating interferometric systems reported so far.