P. Guerrero, M. K. Nguyen, L. Dumas, S. X. Cohen. Three dimensional imaging of flat natural and cultural heritage objects by a Compton scattering modality, Journal of Electronic Imaging. [article]

Characterization and interpretation of flat ancient material objects, such as found in archaeology, paleoenvironments, paleontology, and cultural heritage, remais a challenging task to perform by means of conventional x-ray tomography methods due to the anisotropic morphology and flattened geometry of these artefacts.
To overcome the limitations of the mentioned methodologies for such samples, an imaging modality based on Compton scattering is proposed in this paper.
Classical x-ray tomography treats Compton scattering data as noise in the image formation process, while in Compton scattering tomography the conditions are set such that Compton data become the principal image contrasting agent. Under these conditions, we are able, first, to avoid relative rotations between the sample and the imaging setup, and second, to obtain three-dimensional data even when the object is supported by a dense material by exploiting backscattered photons.

A proceeding paper regarding the conference Eurosim2016 is also available for reading. [proceeding].

This work is supported by a PhD grant funded by the PATRIMA LabEx / Fondation des Sciences du Patrimoine.