ALBERT

Notes: High photon fluxes are crucial in dichromatic digital subtraction angiography with line scan systems to allow for adequate image quality. To obtain images wide enough and with sufficient vertical resolution, each of the two beams used has to be at least 100 mm wide but not more than 0.5 mm high at the patient's heart with the beam energies bracketing the iodine-K edge at 33.17 keV. A new monochromator in Laue transmission geometry has been developed, successfully tested at beamline ID11 of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) and is now in use at the angiography wiggler beamline W2 at HASYLAB. The monochromator consists of two almost identical goniometer heads which are independently controlled. Within each head a bent silicon single crystal extracts a quasimonochromatic beam and focuses it vertically to the patient thus also increasing intensity compared to an unbent crystal. With a storage ring current of 50 mA the new monochromator provides 0.8×1011 photons/mm2/s in front of the patient which is an increase by a factor of 6 compared to the formerly used Bragg design with Ge crystals. Also, it is remarkably more stable against variations of the input power load. © 1995 American Institute of Physics.

Notes: A position sensitive one-dimensional x-ray detector with a large dynamic range ((approximately-greater-than)214:1) for high photon fluxes with fast image recording sequence (300 ms per frame) has been developed for transvenous coronary angiography with synchrotron radiation. A position resolution of 1 LP/mm and a detection quantum efficiency (DQE) of at least 58% (for 11 000 photons per pixel) has been achieved for 33 keV photons in a Xe-CO2 gas mixture at 20 bars. The use of Kr-CO2 as conversion gas provides a better contrast of the weak iodine signal than Xe-CO2 or Si, respectively, for a fraction of 2% of the second harmonics of the synchrotron beam used. © 1995 American Institute of Physics.

Notes: During the last years attempts have been underway at several synchrotron radiation laboratories1–4 to employ the abrupt change of absorption at the iodine K edge (33.17 keV) to the imaging of coronary arteries. The subtraction of two images taken with photon energies just above and below the edge strongly surpresses background contrast like bone and soft tissue and allows for amplification of iodinated structure contrast. At HASYLAB, for these studies, a beamline at a bending magnet was only available until 1987. At this beamline the system NIKOS I was tested to obtain information on its essential components like monochromator and detector by in-vivo investigations of dogs.The basic feature which differs from the approaches in other laboratoriesis simultaneous registration of two stationary beams in a two-line detector without any beam switching. Based on the experience with this system during the last year all its components have been improved and changed to dimensions capable of taking a 12-cm-wide image of the human heart. At present the new system NIKOS II is under testing at the new wiggler beamline HARWI. The new monochromator comprises two pairs of a thin Si Laue case crystal and a Ge Bragg crystal, each, with inherent focussing of the beam to a horizontal line focus of about 0.5 mm height and 12 cm width. The advantage of the Laue crystals which are optimized in thickness (30 μm) for maximum reflectivity, is the low heat absorption and the full use of the white beam in the production of two monochromatic beams. The crystals are cooled in a stream of helium. Compared to the NIKOS I version5 the detector was changed in the following points: The two detection lines are enlarged to 125 mm width and the phosphor at the entrance is exchangeable to be either made of powderlike Gd2O2S:Tb or of single crystals like CdWO4 or CaF2:Eu separated by thin walls for optimum spatial resolution. The numerical aperture of the glass fiber optics guiding the light via image intensifiers to the photodiode arrays is higher. The gain of the intensifiers is raised to 1000.Now two photodiode arrays are needed for the simultaneous readout of the two entrance lines. The readout time is halved by reading the odd and even number diodes by two ADCs per array. All these measures will increase the detective quantum efficiency from 0.2 to 0.6. The performance of the new system will be tested again by investigations of dogs before moving to investigations on humans, expected at the end of this year.

Notes: The performance of a system for quantitave microtomography with synchrotron radiation is described with regard to the spatial resolving power. The experimental setup consists of a double-crystal monochromator, a monitor in front of a sample stage and a line scan detector which is built up of two photodiode arrays (Reticon RL1024SF), which are cooled by Peltier elements to increase the dynamic range. We present the modulation transfer function of the detector and several monitor configurations. So far a spatial resolution of 100 μm has been achieved.

Notes: The construction of the wiggler W2 at DORIS is described together with the major components of the beamline. Details are given on the assembly and performance of the magnet structure. Three different monochromators are used in the beamline alternatively. One of them, a Laue–Bragg-type monochromator is described in more detail.

Notes: It is demonstrated experimentally that the well known spin-selective deflection of neutrons transmitted through a static magnetic field region with triangular geometric boundaries combined with the high angular resolution of a non-dispersive double-crystal arrangement can be used to polarize a thermal neutron beam to a degree close to unity at reasonably low laboratory fields of 1.0 to 1.5 T.

Notes: A special arrangement of Bonse–Hart X-ray interferometers, which uses the Bragg geometry of X-ray diffraction for the beam splitter, mirrors and the analyser (so-called BBB interferometers), has been designed and characterized both computationally and experimentally in different versions. The design includes wavelength-dependent optimization of transmission through the lamella, which is used both for beam splitting and for recombination. For characterization of the function of the instrument, interference patterns were evaluated from BBB interferograms, as well as from LLL (employing the Laue geometry for coherent beam splitting, reflecting and analysing) topograms and from interferograms resulting from a new combined geometrical layout. The influence of gravitation on the horizontally running diffraction planes was visible as a system of fringes in the interferograms, resulting from bending of the lamella under its own weight.

Notes: A new type of crystal monochromator is presented which facilitates the selection of a precisely fixed wavelength λ0 from a continuum at an intermediate bandwidth Δλ/λ of typically 10−3. Its essential feature is consecutive Bragg reflections from two crystals with slightly different Bragg-plane spacings glued rigidly together at near-parallel orientation. The bicrystal effectively manifests a wavelength standard the exact value of which is determined by the angle β of misorientation of the two crystals. The application of a germanium–silicon version of the new device to neutron interferometry is described. The influence of ray geometry on the values of λ0 and Δλ is discussed.

Notes: Back-reflection section topography using white-beam synchrotron radiation has been applied for the investigation of silicon implanted with 1 and 1.6 MeV protons and 4.8 MeV α particles. The beam width was limited to 5 μm, and a series of spots in the vicinity of a centrally adjusted reflection were indexed and analysed. The back-reflection section pattern of implanted crystals usually exhibits fringes corresponding to the reflection from the surface and a series of fringes corresponding to the rear region of the shot-through layer, the destroyed layer and the bulk. The patterns were used for direct evaluation of ion ranges and thicknesses of the shot-through layer. The overall characteristics of the obtained patterns were successfully reproduced in simulations based on numerical integration of the Takagi–Taupin equations. The agreement between the simulation and experiment proves that the lattice-parameter depth-distribution profiles can be assumed to be proportional to interstitial-vacancy distributions obtained using the Monte Carlo method from the Biersack–Ziegler theory. The simulation also reproduced interference tails observed in some section patterns. It was found that these tails are caused by the ion-dose change along the beam and they were probably formed due to the interference between the radiation reflected from the bulk and those rays reflected by the rear region of the shot-through layer.

Notes: Amplitude and intensity distributions within the outgoing beams of the triple-Laue-case (LLL) interferometer have been calculated for the case of zero absorption, which in practice is predominantly encountered with thermal neutrons. The type-1 wavefield with antinodes on the atomic sites, which with X-rays is quite frequently anomalously attenuated in the lattice, is here fully taken into account together with the type-2 wavefield of anomalous low absorption. After the combined diffraction by beam splitter, mirror, and analyser crystal of the interferometer for an incident plane wave has been solved, the solution for an incident spherical wave is developed by Fourier expansion, by a similar method to that first given by Kato [Acta Cryst. (1961), 14, 526–532] for just one diffracting crystal plate. In order to optimize the interferometer geometry spatial intensity profiles as functions of the geometric dimensions of the interferometer and of the phase shift between the interfering beams are calculated. The influence of deviations from the ideal geometry is investigated. Deviations of the order of the extinction length can result in a drastic reduction of interference contrast. Very good energy-converging and contrast properties are found if tM = 2tS= 2tA where tM, tS, tA are the thicknesses of mirror, beam splitter, and analyser respectively. The calculated intensity profiles are in agreement with preliminary experimental profiles obtained recently with a silicon interferometer at the HFR in Grenoble.