System and method for material characterization

A system for characterizing at least a part of a material comprising:

• means for generating incident X-rays configured to irradiate at least the part of the material;
• one or more means for detecting radiation emanating from within or passing through the material as a result of an irradiation by the incident X-rays and thereby produce a detection signal;
• and
• one or more means for processing the detection signal to form a detector energy spectrum,
• wherein the one or more means for detecting radiation and the one or more means for processing the detection signal are configured to characterize at least the part of the material by performing an energy-resolved photon-counting X-ray transmission spectroscopy analysis calculated using the detector energy spectrum, the energy-resolved photon-counting X-ray transmission spectroscopy analysis comprising measuring an effective atomic number Z based on the detector energy spectrum in a comparison with calibration measurements made during a calibration, and
• wherein the calibration comprises taking calibration measurements obtained from irradiations of varying-thickness samples of different calibration materials of known atomic number Z, so as to generate calibration detector energy spectra I(Z, x, B) as a function of Z, a calibration material thickness x, and histogram bins B, without an absolute energy calibration of the histogram bins B.

A method of characterizing at least a part of a material, the method comprising the steps of:

• irradiating at least a part of the material with incident X-rays from an X-ray source device;
• detecting radiation emanating from within or passing through the material as a result of an irradiation by the incident X-rays;
• producing a detection signal;
• processing the detection signal to form a detector energy spectrum;
• and
• characterizing at least the part of the material by performing an energy-resolved photon-counting X-ray transmission spectroscopy analysis calculated using the detector energy spectrum, the energy-resolved photon-counting X-ray transmission spectroscopy analysis comprising measuring an effective atomic number Z based on the detector energy spectrum in a comparison with calibration measurements made during a calibration, and
• wherein the calibration comprises taking calibration measurements obtained from irradiations of varying-thickness samples of different calibration materials of known atomic number Z, so as to generate calibration detector energy spectra I(Z, x, B) as a function of Z, a calibration material thickness x, and histogram bins B, without an absolute energy calibration of the histogram bins B.