Lensless X-ray microscopy

Professor J. Rodenburg and his colleagues from the University of Sheffield, UK and the Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland recently developed a novel X-ray microscope, which is very different from conventional microscopes developed so far, because it does not employ any optics to focus the beams. The lensless technique collects diffraction patterns from several overlapping areas in space, which provides information about how the rays interfere with each other after they have been diffracted through the object. This interference can then be calculated backwards to what the rays' previous phase changes must have been, giving a complete picture of the structure. Since this innovative technique relies on a special type of computation (called ptychographical iterative engine (PIE), for details, see H. M. L. Faulkner and J. M. Rodenburg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 023903 (2004)), rather than specific equipment, it could also be used to boost the power of optical and even electron microscopes. For more information, see the paper, "Hard-X-Ray Lensless Imaging of Extended Objects", J. M. Rodenburg et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 034801 (2007)