A correction procedure for the self-absorption artifacts in x-ray Compton tomography

Compton tomography generally makes use of the same scanning techniques (rotations and translations) as transmission tomography but modifies the reconstruction software. However, it is also possible to use an x-y scanning technique, i.e. two independent sets of linear translations of the source and of the detector. The x-y technique allows one to scan only a limited zone of the sample, whereas the rotation-translations method needs to scan the whole sample. x-y scanning has a serious drawback: it is more sensitive than the translation-rotation technique to self-absorption phenomena in the matrix. In this paper a new algorithm for x-y scanning reconstruction is described. This algorithm considers and corrects self-absorption effects without requiring a priori knowledge about the chemical composition. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.