High-resolution reconstruction of Fresnel zone plate coded imaging

Abstract

Zone plate coded imaging is an experimental technique for particle and strong X-ray imaging, which is widely applied to astronomy, nuclear medicine, and laser inertial confinement fusion researches. From conventional perspective, spatial resolution of zone plate depends on the encoding zone plate width of outermost ring r with a size greater than 1.22r. In X-ray region, however, the outermost ring width of Fresnel zone plate is limited by processing technology. Such a limitation makes it impossible to fabricate a sufficiently small zone plate, thus restricting the applications of Fresnel zone plate coded imaging. In this paper, we present a new reconstruction method of zone plate coded imaging by using a higher-order order Gabor zone plate. With the proposed method, higher spatial resolution can be achieved than with the regular methods, thus the spatial resolution is improved by 1/m times the width of outermost ring (where m is a positive integer). Consequently such a breakthrough goes beyond the limits of Rayleigh criterion in general.