Advanced Tomographic Methods in Materials Research and Engineering

Book excerpt: Tomography provides three-dimensional images of heterogeneous materials or engineering components, and offers an unprecedented insight into their internal structure. By using X-rays generated by synchrotrons, neutrons from nuclear reactors, or electrons provided by transmission electron microscopes, hitherto invisible structures can be revealed which are not accessible to conventional tomography based on X-ray tubes. This book is mainly written for applied physicists, materials scientists and engineers. It provides detailed descriptions of the recent developments in this field, especially the extension of tomography to materials research and engineering. The book is grouped into four parts: a general introduction into the principles of tomography, image analysis and the interactions between radiation and matter, and one part each for synchrotron X-ray tomography, neutron tomography, and electron tomography. Within these parts, individual chapters written by different authors describe important versions of tomography, and also provide examples of applications to demonstrate the capacity of the methods. The accompanying CD-ROM contains some typical data sets and programs to reconstruct, analyse and visualise the three-dimensional data.