Recent developments on techniques for differential phase imaging at the medical beamline of ELETTRA

Over the last decade different phase contrast approaches have been exploited at the medical beamline SYRMEP of the synchrotron radiation facility Elettra in Trieste, Italy. In particular special focus has been drawn to analyzer based imaging and the associated imaging theory and processing. Analyzer based Imaging (ABI) and Diffraction Enhanced Imaging (DEI) techniques have been successfully applied in several biomedical applications. Recently it has been suggested to translate the acquired knowledge in this field towards a Thomson Backscattering Source (TBS), which is presently under development at the Frascati National Laboratories of INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) in Rome, Italy. Such source is capable of producing intense and quasi-monochromatic hard X-ray beams. For the technical implementation of biomedical phase imaging at the TBS a grating interferometer for differential phase contrast imaging has been designed and successfully tested at SYRMEP beamline.