Non-destructive testing with neutron phase contrast imaging

At the NEUTRA facility (SINQ), a great variety of objects was investigated with phase contrast radiography, for instance metal foams and casted objects. The phase contrast effect is now well understood and great efforts are made to improve the existing set-up and to exploit all the possibilities offered by this technique. The tomography facility ANTARES at the FRM-II in Garching was designed to perform phase contrast measurements with neutrons as a matter of routine. goal is to do quantitative phase contrast radiography and the step towards phase contrast tomography. By performing phase retrieval for every slice of a tomographic data set, it becomes possible to assign every voxel the imaginary (attenuation coefficient) and the real part of the refractive index. This allows the separation of materials, which could not be separated hitherto in conventional tomographies.