Compact phase and darkfield laboratory X-ray imaging system and method

A method for simultaneous X-ray phase contrast and dark-field imaging of a sample, comprising:

• generating an at least partially coherent X-ray beam using a laboratory X-ray source;
• passing the X-ray beam through a spatial beam modulator to generate a speckle pattern in a field of view (FOV);
• positioning a sample in the beam, before or after the spatial beam modulator;
• detecting the X-ray beam after it has passed through the sample using an X-ray detection system comprising a spatially resolved detector with a pixel size sufficient to capture shifts and contrast degradation in the speckle pattern;
• obtaining a reference speckle image without the sample and a sample speckle image with the sample in the FOV;
• registering the reference and sample speckle images;
• tracking shifts in the speckle patterns between the reference and sample images to determine phase gradients;
• and
• integrating the phase gradients to produce a phase image of the sample and contrast changes of the speckle patterns to determine a darkfield signal;
• wherein a source-detector distance is less than 100 centimeters (cm) and preferably less than 60 cm.