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OPEN Fast acquisition protocol for X‑ray

scattering tensor tomography
Jisoo Kim1,2, Matias Kagias2,3*, Federica Marone2*, Zhitian Shi1,2 & Marco Stampanoni1,2

Microstructural information over an entire sample is important to understand the macroscopic

behaviour of materials. X-ray scattering tensor tomography facilitates the investigation of the
microstructural organisation in statistically large sample volumes. However, established acquisition
protocols based on scanning small-angle X-ray scattering and X-ray grating interferometry inherently
require long scan times even with highly brilliant X-ray sources. Recent developments in X-ray
diffractive optics towards circular pattern arrays enable fast single-shot acquisition of the sample
scattering properties with 2D omnidirectional sensitivity. X-ray scattering tensor tomography with
the use of this circular grating array has been demonstrated. We propose here simple yet inherently
rapid acquisition protocols for X-ray scattering tensor tomography leveraging on these new optical
elements. Results from both simulation and experimental data, supported by a null space analysis,
suggest that the proposed acquisition protocols are not only rapid but also corroborate that sufficient
information for the accurate volumetric reconstruction of the scattering properties is provided. The
proposed acquisition protocols will build the basis for rapid inspection and/or time-resolved tensor
tomography of the microstructural organisation over an extended field of view.

The micro- and nano-structure of various natural and artificial materials is at the base of their macroscopic
properties. For instance, the local orientation of collagen fibres is strongly related to the mechanical properties
of ­bone1,2 and the local orientation of neuronal axons determines the structural and functional network of the
­brain3. Likewise for synthetic fibre based materials, their mechanical, thermal and electrical ­properties4–6 are
dictated by the local fibre orientation as well as by how well the fibres are aligned. The possibility to investigate
the microscopic architecture in statistically large enough sample volumes would therefore be valuable during
the development of new materials, better understanding existing materials, as well as for product quality control
in industrial settings.
X-rays are useful to obtain information on the inner structure of materials in a non-destructive manner.
However, in conventional X-ray imaging, just like in many other modalities, a trade-off between spatial resolu-
tion and examined field of view (FOV) is unavoidable. With an effective detector pixel size of a few µm and a
few thousands detector pixels, the FOV is limited to a few mm.
The small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) signal appears as the Fourier transform of the autocorrelation
function of the electron density of a spatially unresolved microstructure. Thus, SAXS contrast can mitigate the
trade-off between the length-scale of interest and the FOV, facilitating full correlative studies of the micro- and
nano-structure over macroscopic sample ­volumes7,8. The projection image data with local 2D SAXS information
can be recorded by scanning a narrow beam corresponding to the size of a single pixel of a projection image
­data9. The 2D SAXS information can be partially recorded by utilising X-ray grating interferometry (XGI), using
periodic phase modulating structures creating interference fringe at specific distances d ­ ownstream10,11.
From a collection of projection image data with 2D SAXS information taken at different sample angular poses,
we can perform X-ray scattering tensor tomography, to reconstruct the scattering tensor, 3D directional informa-
tion of microstructure, for each voxel of the reconstructed volume. A set of coefficients of the scattering tensor
which models the 3D scattering distribution of the underlying microstructure is reconstructed in each ­voxel12–15.
The acquisition setup needs though multiple tilted rotation axes along the beam direction (two angular
degrees of freedom), to provide the necessary information for reconstruction with a higher a­ ccuracy16,17. This
is because anisotropic structures cause anisotropic scattering and the probed signal depends on the relative
orientation between the underlying structure and the incident ­beam18. In addition to the two angular degrees
of freedom, scanning SAXS based X-ray scattering tensor tomography requires pixel-by-pixel scanning of a
narrow beam per projection pose. This requirement intrinsically leads to a long experiment time. X-ray grating

1
Institute for Biomedical Engineering, University and ETH Zürich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland. 2Swiss Light Source,
Paul Scherrer Institut, 5232 Villigen, Switzerland. 3Present address: Division of Engineering and Applied Science,
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. *email: [email protected]; federica.marone@
psi.ch

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Figure 1.  Experimental setup for X-ray scattering tensor tomography with circular gratings. An overview of
the setup is shown in (a). The rotation motor revolves α degrees and the rotation axis can be tilted β degrees.
The circular grating array (b) is composed of unit cells where P is half the unit cell size and g is the period of
the fine grating lines. It is placed near the sample at a distance L = Pg/2 from the detector. A circular fringe
(c) is formed at the detector where the 2D directional scattering signal is extracted by measuring the visibility
reduction along the radial profile at an angle −90◦ ≤ γ < 90◦.

interferometry (XGI) based tensor tomography requires additional angular degrees of freedom (in total three)
and thus rather complex acquisition ­geometry16 because the linear grating do not provide directional scattering
sensitivity, leading to a high acquisition overhead. In addition, XGI based tensor tomography has been exclusively
performed on conventional lab-based sources, which requires orders of magnitude longer sample exposure time
per projection pose. Therefore, the experiment times of established methods are in the order of several hours
hindering any large (cm) scale exploitation of scattering tensor t­ omography16,17.
Circular gratings arranged in an array can provide local small-angle scattering information in multiple direc-
tions over the entire FOV in a single s­ hot19,20. We have previously demonstrated X-ray scattering tensor tomog-
raphy with the use of this circular grating ­array21, with which the reduction in experiment time is considerable
compared to pre-existing ­techniques12,13 owing to the single-shot omnidirectional scattering sensitivity of the
used diffractive optical component. By accelerating the data acquisition, more time-efficient inspection of the
microstructure organisation over an extended FOV will be enabled, making this technology attractive for indus-
trial applications as well as for biological and material science studies. To take full advantage of this circular
grating array and push the acquisition speed as well as minimise acquisition overhead, different acquisition
protocols have to be assessed and investigated.
In this paper, we propose rapid acquisition protocols relying on a setup with two rotational axes and the
recently developed circular grating array. It is more challenging to assess how an acquisition geometry will affect
the reconstruction accuracy compared to conventional scalar tomography. This is because scattering signals are
collected along multiple directions per pixel and the probed directional scattering signal depends on the relative
orientation between the underlying structure and the incident beam. Therefore, in the first part, in order to assess
and compare the performance of different tensor tomography acquisition protocols, we performed a null space
analysis to investigate the intrinsic characteristics of the different acquisition geometries. In the second part,
simulation studies are used to validate the acquisition protocols independently from any possible experimental
deviations such as sample misalignment and motor inaccuracies. In the last part, experimental studies were
finally carried out to test the robustness and confirm the performance of the proposed acquisition protocols also
under real investigation conditions.
The proposed rapid acquisition protocols with minimal acquisition overhead coupled with bright X-ray
sources will unlock time-resolved X-ray scattering tensor tomography capabilities. The acquisition protocols are
potentially compatible and attractive for any other method providing omnidirectional scattering sensitivity in
a single s­ hot22,23, because the same logic for the null space and the simulation analysis can be applied. The null
space analysis framework shown in this manuscript is potentially a good tool to assess acquisition geometry for
any tensor tomography method.

Methods
X‑ray scattering tensor tomography with circular gratings.  A schematic overview of the experi-
mental setup for X-ray scattering tensor tomgoraphy with circular gratings is shown in Fig. 1. In order to capture
2D-omnidirectional X-ray scattering signals with a single X-ray projection, a periodic array of multi-circular

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gratings based on a diffractive annular structure is used in this s­ tudy20. This diffractive structure is characterised
by a global period P which is half the repetition period of the unit cell and by g which is the period of the fine
circular gratings within each unit cell as shown in Fig. 1b. The etching depth of the gratings is dependent on the
wavelength  of the used X-rays and design phase shift. More details regarding the grating design and fabrication
can be found in the ­reference20,24. The circular grating array is placed at a distance L = Pg/2 upstream from the
detector as shown in Fig. 1a. The circular diffraction fringe formed at the detector position is readout by multiple
detector pixels and an exemplary unit cell window of 9 × 9 pixels is shown in Fig. 1c. The directional scattering
signal is extracted from the fringes recorded on each 9 × 9 detector pixel grid along different signal extraction
angles γ (2D). For all studies with the use of circular grating array in this paper, the scattering signal extraction
angle γ was set to be {−90◦ , −67.5◦ , . . . , 67.5◦ } . The directional scattering signals are collected from projections
acquired with the sample positioned at different angles α and β . The angle α and β represent the rotation and tilt
of the stage as shown in Fig. 1a. Then the projection vector p is formed and the elements in p are the measured
scattering signals for each γ  , α , β , and detector ­pixel21. The vectorised reconstruction volume µ is composed of
K different scattering sampling direction channels µ = [µ1 ; µ2 ; . . . ; µK ] (3D). Thus, for each reconstruction
voxel, the scattering distribution is sampled along K different scattering sampling directions. We model the 3D
scattering distribution as an ellipsoid, which is expressed as a symmetric rank-2 tensor matrix with 6 independ-
ent components. Therefore, at least six scattering sampling directions in 3D ( K ≥ 6 ) are required in order to
define a unique scattering ellipsoid after reconstruction. Increasing the scattering sampling direction vectors
would in general slightly improve the accuracy of the reconstruction; however, this will elongate the reconstruc-
tion computation. Therefore, √ we used √seven scattering
√ sampling
√ direction vectors
Sk = [1, 0, 0], [0, 1, 0], [0, 0, 1], [1, 1, 1]/ 3, [−1, 1, 1]/ 3, [1, −1, 1]/ 3, [1, 1, −1]/ 3 for k = 1, 2, . . . , 7 for
simplicity (three directionsparallel to the x, y, and z axes and four diagonal directions). To recover µ , the system
of linear equations Aµ = Kk=1 Vk Wµk = p can be solved with any existing solver. A is the system matrix com-
puted as a sum of multiplication of the scaling matrices Vk for different scattering sampling directions Sk and the
geometric system matrix W for discrete beam path i­ ntegrals21. The size of A is M × N × K where M is the num-
ber of elements in the projection data, N is the number of voxels in the reconstruction volume. Principal com-
ponent analysis (PCA) is applied to the reconstructed scattering distribution µ which is modelled with an ellip-
soid approximation: three principal axes are computed for each voxel. The principal axis with the shortest length
represents the main structure orientation, the mean length of the three principal axes represents the average
scattering (  (1 + 2 + 3 )/3  ), and the  fractional a­nisotropy25 represents the scattering anisotropy
(  (1 − 2 )2 + (2 − 3 )2 + (3 − 1 )2 /2 21 + 22 + 23  ), where 1 , 2 , 3 are the eigenvalues of the symmet-


ric 2-rank scattering tensor describing the scattering distribution as an ellipsoid. Detailed information on the
signal extraction and tensor reconstruction methods used in this study can be found in the following reference
­works12,20,21,26.

Acquisition protocols.  In general, acquisition protocols which widely and densely cover a virtual unit
sphere around samples provide more accurate tensor reconstruction results. It is possible to design optimised
but rather complicated trajectories to cover a certain number of scattering orientations, if conventional linear
gratings are u ­ sed16. Those complicated trajectories result in a larger acquisition overhead (an effective exposure
time divided by the total experiment time) and are not ideal for rapid tensor tomography acquisition. Here, we
implement instead two simple acquisition types—stairwise and spiral acquisition protocols, based on a simple
two-axis system and compatible with a higher acquisition speed with minimised acquisition overhead. These
acquisition protocols rely on the use of circular grating arrays or any other method with omnidirectional scatter-
ing sensitivity such as the speckle pattern ­based22 as well as the recently developed omnidirectional simultaneous
reciprocal and real space imaging ­method27.
The stairwise acquisition protocols foresee a stepwise tilting of the rotation axis as previously implemented
for scanning SAXS, which has omnidirectional scattering s­ ensitivity17. The rotation motor turns from α = 0◦ to
α = 360◦ at each angle βi from the set of chosen n tilt angles β = {βi |βmin ≤ βi ≤ βmax , i = 1, . . . , n} , resulting in
stairwise beam trajectories. The number of projections at each tilt angle is kept constant in this study. In addition
to the stairwise acquisition protocol, we also propose a spiral acquisition scheme to push the acquisition speed
and minimise overhead. The spiral acquisition trajectory is realised by tilting the rotation axis while the sample
is being rotated. The rotation and tilt motors simultaneously turn from α = 0◦ to α = 360◦ × n and β = βmin
to β = βmax . The spiral acquisition provides projection views at more tilt angles than the stairwise acquisition.
The overhead is inherently close to zero for the spiral protocol whereas acquisition overhead in between each
tilt angle is difficult to avoid for the stairwise scheme. For both acquisition types, the maximum tilt angle βmax is
limited in our current setup to 45◦ because the motor stage blocks the beam at larger tilt angles. Beam entry/exit
trajectories on a unit sphere from the sample’s point of view for different acquisition protocols are shown in Fig. 2.
The difference in the beam trajectories between the two acquisition types is largest when n = 1 . Acquisitions
with n = 5 and a total of 100 projections show a more uniform distribution of beam entry/exit points over the
unit sphere compared to n = 1 with the same total number of projections. We may expect a higher reconstruc-
tion accuracy with n = 5 compared to with n = 1 . However, for a given total experiment time, the protocol with
n = 5 requires a rotation ( α ) speed five times higher than for n = 1 . This could lead to increased motion and
blurring artefacts especially for time resolved experiments with a short total experiment time; it could therefore
be beneficial to minimise n in such cases.

Null space computation.  The null space analysis is used to assess a geometric condition for tomographic
imaging problems. The existence of a non-trivial null space implies that certain components in the reconstruc-
tion volume cannot be confidently recovered from the measurements; therefore, the null space analysis can be

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Figure 2.  Beam entry/exit trajectories for stairwise and spiral acquisition schemes from the sample’s point of
view. The number of turns n and the total number of projections are indicated on top of the plots. The tilt angle
β for the shown stairwise trajectory with n = 1 is 0◦ but it can be chosen to be any angle between 0◦ and 45◦.

used to assess which part of the model can be resolved with a specific acquisition ­geometry28. For example, a null
space analysis was used to evaluate the uncertainty of the computed reconstruction for the isotropic scattering
component in anisotropic X-ray darkfield tomography (AXDT), with conventional linear g­ ratings16.
The null space is the linear subspace of all vectors µ mapped to zero ( Aµ = 0 ) and can be derived purely from
the system matrix A which describes the geometrical setup of an acquisition protocol. A non-trivial null space
µnull always exists when the system matrix A is rank deficient. Any vector µ in such a system can be decomposed
into the minimum-norm least square solution µLS and the null space µnull that are orthogonal to each other,
holding the following property: Aµ = A(µLS + µnull ) = AµLS because Aµnull = 0 . The computation of the null
space based on singular value decomposition (SVD) is efficient for small problems, which requires to load the
full representation of A into the memory. For larger system, such as our tensor tomography problem, the huge
memory requirements of this method prevent using the SVD for the null space computation.
An iterative method is employed here instead: finding the null space is equivalent to solving the following
constrained optimisation problem:
1
min �µnull − v�22 subject to Aµnull = 0. (1)
µnull 2

v is a random vector whose elements are in the range of [0, 1]. Solving the above problem is equivalent to comput-
ing the orthogonal projection of the initial vector µ0null on the null space N(A) . An approximate solution µnull is
found by setting the gradient of the Lagrange function L (µnull , ) of the above problem to zero and iteratively
solving it, where  is the Lagrange multiplier vector.
    
I AT µnull v
∇L (µnull , ) = 0 ⇔
A 0 
=
0 (2)

Assessment of the reconstruction accuracy.  To assess and quantify the reconstruction results in scat-
tering tensor tomography, more aspects than in conventional scalar tomography need to be taken into account
because a single voxel is characterised by more than one parameter. Analogously to scalar tomography, the
distance between the tensor in each voxel for the reference and the evaluated reconstructed volumes can be
computed. We use here the inner product of the structure main orientation vectors v ref and v , I = |�v ref , v�| in
each voxel, as the error metric to assess the orientation reconstruction accuracy of data acquired with different
acquisition protocols, where v ref and v are the reconstructed structure orientation vector of the reference and
the assessed volume respectively. In addition to the error in the reconstructed orientation, we also use an error
metric E = (sref − s)2 to compare the average scattering or scattering anisotropy signal s, which is a scalar vari-
able, extracted from the reconstructed tensor in each voxel.

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Figure 3.  Visualisation of the computed null space for different scattering sampling directions k. The null space
was computed for different acquisition geometries: stairwise and spiral acquisition; different grating types:
vertically aligned linear gratings, horizontally aligned linear gratings, and circular gratings; different number
of turns n. β indicates the tilt angle. High values in null space for scattering component k indicate that the
acquisition protocol provides large uncertainties in the reconstruction for that component.

Results
Null space analysis.  The null space was computed for different system matrices for different acquisition
protocols for an example reconstruction volume size of 50 × 50 × 50 voxels. The total number of projections was
fixed to 1000 for all acquisition protocols, and the number of unit cells per projection was 100 × 100 The com-
puted null space was averaged along the z-direction (parallel to the rotation axis when the tilt angle is zero) for
different scattering sampling directions and visualised in Fig. 3. The scattering sampling directions should not
be confused with the structure orientation. High values in the null space indicate that the acquisition protocol
provides large uncertainties in the reconstruction results. Considering that the elements of the initial random
vector v are in the range of [0, 1], the highest value would be 1. Considering that the elements of the initial ran-
dom vector v are in the range of [0, 1] and that difference between v and µnull is minimised (Eq. 1), the elements
of µnull should also be in this range, with the highest values around 1. Figure 3a–e show that the information
for certain scattering sampling directions cannot be reconstructed with the conventional linear grating arrays,
independently on whether the linear grating array is aligned vertically ( γ = 0◦ ) or horizontally ( γ = 90◦ ). The
null space is reduced when n = 10 and the linear grating array is aligned horizontally as shown in Fig. 3f, even
though the null space for k = 1, 2 remains higher compared to the other components. On the other hand, a
significantly larger reduction in the null space is achieved by using a circular grating array already when n = 1
( β = 0◦ ) as shown in Fig. 3g. Choosing a tilt angle of β = 22.5◦ instead of β = 0◦ or using the spiral acquisition
protocol instead of the stairwise one gives a smaller null space as shown in Fig. 3h,j, respectively. We observe a
general reduction in the null space when n is increased from 1 to 10 both for the stairwise ( β = {0◦ , 5◦ , . . . , 45◦ } )
and spiral ( βmin = 0◦ and βmax = 45◦ ) acquisition geometry. Little difference is observed between the stairwise
and spiral acquisition protocols when n = 10 as we can see in Fig. 3i,k. Summarizing, an improvement in the
tensor reconstruction accuracy with a circular grating array even at small n compared to the case of linear grat-
ing arrays is expected. Also, when n = 1 , a higher reconstruction accuracy with the spiral acquisition protocol
should be achieved compared to results with a fixed tilt angle of β = 0◦ . Instead, comparable results are expected
for the spiral acquisition ( n = 1 ) and for a fixed tilt angle of β = 22.5◦ . The null space for n = 2 and n = 5 are
available online in the Supplementary Fig. S1.

Simulation study.  In a first step we have assessed the performance of the proposed acquisition protocols
by conducting experiments with an in silico sample shown in Fig. 4a. The cubic sample is divided into eight
equal subvolumes with fibres oriented in different directions as described in Fig. 4b. The fibre orientation in each
voxel is colour coded with the [R,G,B] values corresponding to the absolute values of the components [x,y,z]
of the vector representing the fibre direction. The corresponding colour mapping sphere is shown in Fig. 4c.

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Figure 4.  Visualisation of the reconstructed volumes for the in silico sample (a), which has different
subvolumes with fibres oriented in different directions ofibre (b). The orientation vector is visualised according to
a colour scheme (c) which maps the absolute value of its components [x,y,z] to the [R,G,B] values. Axial slices
through the lower and upper part of the reconstructed sample acquired with the stairwise (d) and spiral (e)
acquisition protocols are shown. n represents the number of turns. The colour bars for the average scattering and
scattering anisotropy are shown on the right.

This colour coding scheme for the visualisation of 3D orientations is used throughout this paper. The reference
volume µk,ref was generated by calculating the squared inner product of the scattering sampling directions and
the fibre orientation |�Sk , ofibre �|2 . System matrices for different acquisition geometries were computed. Projec-
tion data were generated by forward projection of the reference volume using these system matrices rather than
by simulating individual fibres and using a wave propagation approach. This is because we focus on evaluating
the effect of different number of tilt angles on the reconstruction accuracy rather than trying to more precisely
mimic the small-angle scattering phenomenon of the X-rays in the sample. Additive zero-mean white Gaussian
noise proportional to the absorption signal was added to the simulated projections. This is a valid approximation
assuming a high-flux ­environment29.
Projection images were computed for different angular positions with n from 1 to 7 both for the stairwise and
the spiral acquisition geometries. The total number of projections was fixed to 1000, and the number of unit cells
per projection image was 100 × 100 . Axial slices through the reconstructed volumes are shown in Fig. 4d,e for
n = 1, 3, 7 . Ideally in this simulation study, the average scattering and scattering anisotropy should have the same
value in every voxel for subvolumes 1 to 7. As predicted from the null space analysis, the largest deviations from
the reference volume are observed for n = 1 with a fixed tilt angle of β = 0◦ . The reconstruction for β = 22.5◦ ,
n = 1 and the stairwise acquisition looks closer to the reference than the β = 0◦ case. Reconstructions for all n
and the spiral acquisition protocol look instead fairly similar, with larger variations in the average scattering and
scattering anisotropy. For n ≥ 3 , the reconstruction results for the stairwise and spiral acquisition geometries are
comparable. For a more quantitative assessment of the reconstruction results, the inner product I of the recon-
structed orientation vectors with the ground truth reference vectors was calculated for all voxels of the different
subvolumes and the results are shown in the form of box plots in Fig. 5a.
For the stairwise acquisition protocol, the largest inaccuracy is observed for n = 1 for subvolume 1 and 2
where the fibres lie in the horizontal (x–y) plane as could already be visually appreciated in Fig. 4d. The subvol-
ume 3 is relatively well reproduced even for n = 1 as expected because we have more projection poses where the
X-ray beam is orthogonal to the fibre structure. In Fig. 5a, we observed a larger orientation inaccuracy when
n = 1 for subvolume 7 with diagonally oriented fibres compared to other subvolumes with diagonally oriented
fibres. This observation arises from the fact that the directional scattering information in subvolume 7 is con-
taminated by signals from the neighbor subvolumes 1 and 2, where the fibres aligned in the xy-plane scatter
isotropically in a certain angular range of projection. It means that the reconstruction accuracy depends not
only on the acquisition scheme but also on the surrounding structures around the region of interest. The inner
product I approaches 1 when n ≥ 3 for all subvolumes.

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Figure 5.  Quantitative assessment of the reconstruction accuracy for the in silico sample. Box plots of the
inner product I for the different preferential orientations are shown in (a). The error E of the average scattering
is shown in (b) and of the scattering anisotropy in (c). Note the separate axis scales of the non-empty and the
empty volume.

For the spiral acquisition geometry, only minor variations in the inner product I for different n and subvol-
umes exist. For the error E analysis of the average scattering and scattering anisotropy results (Fig. 5b,c), the
subvolumes were grouped into non-empty (1–7) and empty (8). In general, the error E for both the average scat-
tering and scattering anisotropy signal was larger in the empty subvolume, but no significant difference in error
E is observed for different n and geometries except for n = 1 and the stairwise acquisition protocol. In addition,
the inner product I and the error E were similar for a fixed tilt angled of β = 22.5◦ and the spiral acquisition
when n = 1 as predicted by the null space analysis (Fig. 3h,j). The results shown here are obtained with 1000
projections, which for the considered volume size of 50 × 50 × 50 guarantee sufficient sampling. Even with this
largest number of projections, a fixed tilt angle at β = 0◦will not provide accurate results. The same analysis
has also been performed with only 100 projections (sparse sampling) with the results following the same trend
regarding n and the accuracy metrics as reported from 1000 projections.

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Figure 6.  Visualisation of the reconstructed volumes for the validation sample. The validation sample (a) with
three carbon fibre bundles in a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) box oriented orthogonal to one another.
Axial slices through the lower and the upper part of the validation sample reconstructed from the data acquired
with the reference (b), the stairwise (c) and the spiral (d) acquisition protocols. Fibre orientation, average
scattering and scattering anisotropy values are shown for each acquisition scheme. Scale bar: 4 mm

Validation sample.  A validation sample (Fig. 6a) with a size of 4 × 4 × 4mm3 as described in our previ-
ous ­publication21 was used. The sample has carbon fibres with a diameter of 12 µm bundled and inserted into
three different regions indicated as 1, 2, and 3. The projection images were acquired with a parallel synchrotron
monochromatic X-ray beam ( 17keV , bandwidth of 2–3% ) at the TOMCAT beamline, Swiss Light Source, Paul
Scherrer Institut. The beam size was 14.3 × 4.8 mm2 and the effective FOV achieved with vertically stitched
scans was 14.3 × 12.7 mm2 . The π-shift circular grating array had a unit cell period of P = 49.5 µm and a fine
grating period of g = 1.46 µm (Fig. 1b). The number of unit cells (circular patterns) in the FOV was 144 × 128 .
A LuAG:Ce scintillator with a thickness of 300 µm was used to convert incoming X-rays to photons in the opti-
cal energy range compatible with the used camera and was placed at a distance L = 49.5 cm (Fig. 1a) from the
grating array. Visible light photons were delivered to the detector by a high numerical aperture 1x microscope
optics accepting a diagonal up to 40 mm. The in-house developed ­GigaFRoST30 sCMOS detector with a sensor
pixel size of 11 µm was used. The fringe pattern in each unit cell was sampled with 9 × 9 detector pixel windows.
The exposure time for each projection image was 10 ms and projection images were acquired in a continuous
manner.
The reference reconstruction visualised in Fig. 6b was generated with the stairwise acquisition scheme with
projection images taken at 100 rotation and 46 tilt angles: α = {0◦ , 3.6◦ , . . . , 356.4◦ } and β = {0◦ , 1◦ , . . . , 45◦ } .
The reconstructed volume was used as reference (“ground-truth”) for the qualitative and quantitative comparison
of the different acquisition protocols. For the results for the stairwise acquisition scheme shown in Fig. 6c, the
full reference dataset was uniformly sub sampled for the desired n values so that always a total of 100 projec-
tion images was used for the reconstruction. For instance, 100 projection images were taken at tilt angle β = 0◦
for n = 1 , and 33 projection images were taken at each tilt angle β = {0◦ , 23◦ , 45◦ } for n = 3 . For the spiral
acquisition geometry, a total of 100 projection images homogeneously distributed along the spiral trajectories
with different n values, where βmin = 0◦ and βmax = 45◦ , were acquired and considered for the reconstruction
(Fig. 6d). A stitched scan was performed due to the limited beam height and the sample translation for three
stitches caused a few seconds of overhead. For the different geometries, the tensor reconstruction was performed
following the method described in Ref.2.1, with a volume geometry of 81 × 81 × 76 voxels.
From the axial slices shown in Fig. 6b–d, it is clear that the reconstruction with a fixed tilt angle of β = 0◦
deviates the most from the reference images. The reconstructions improved for β = 22.5◦ or for spiral acquisi-
tion when n = 1 although they still visually deviate from the reference. Only minor deviation from the reference
is instead visually observable for all other cases. These observations are qualitatively in agreement with the null
space analysis and the simulation results shown in the previous sections. In addition to the visual comparison
of the reconstruction results, we have also performed a quantitative analysis with the inner product I and the

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Figure 7.  Quantitative assessment of the reconstruction accuracy for the validation sample. Box plots of the
inner product I for the different preferential orientations are shown in (a). The error E of the average scattering
is shown in (b) and of the scattering anisotropy in (c). Note the separate axis scales of the non-empty and the
empty volume.

scalar error E. For the results evaluation (Fig. 7), voxels belonging to the 3 different regions shown in Fig. 6a
have been considered. The inner product I was calculated for each region defined as the group of voxels in a
box surrounding the region and the results are shown in Fig. 7a. We observe relatively more deviation from
the reference with a fixed tilt angle of β = 0◦ compared to the other cases. Also, the deviation is larger for the
region 1 and 2 where the fibres lie in the horizontal (x–y) plane. As projection views at tilt angles larger than 0◦
are added, the reconstruction accuracy in the x–y plane increases. For n ≥ 3 , the reconstructed orientation is
already close to the reference for both the stairwise and spiral acquisition schemes. For the calculation of the
error E, the reconstructed volume was subdivided in empty and non-empty regions by applying a threshold to
the average scattering. The group of voxels with an average scattering signal higher than 30% of the maximum
signal over the entire reference volume was defined as the non-empty region and the group of voxels with a signal
smaller than the defined threshold was defined as the empty region. For the pixels in both regions, the error E
was calculated and the box plots are shown in Fig. 7b,c. In general, the error E was largest when n = 1 for the
stairwise acquisition, whereas no major difference is observed for n ≥ 3 , in agreement with the analyses in the
previous sections. The error E for the scattering anisotropy in the empty regions was particularly large (Fig. 7c)

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Figure 8.  Fibre pellet phantom analysis—(a) The sample is composed of carbon (black) and glass fibre (white)
material as well as wood (brown). (b) Full 3D view of the reconstructed fibre orientations (stairwise, n = 5 ). (c)
Contour image based on the average scattering signal. (d) Reconstructed fibre orientation for the 2D slice shown
in (c) (subsampled by a factor of 5 for visualisation). The 3D colour ball maps the 3D fibre orientation. (e)
Measured and forward projection images at an arbitrary angle. The 2D colour wheel maps the fibre orientations
projected onto the 2D detector plane. Scale bar: 1 cm.

as also observed in the simulation study (Fig. 5c). We believe that this is because the scattering anisotropy is
proportional to the square root of the ratio of the variance to mean of the lengths of the principal axes of the
scattering ellipsoid and is inherently more prone to noise. In particular in background regions where the aver-
age scattering contribution is small or none and at sharp edges where the scattering direction changes over a
short distance, scattering anisotropy signals could appear artificially large. A mask based on either the average
scattering or the absorption is therefore necessary to properly visualise volumes with the scattering anisotropy.
The simplest type of such a mask sets all voxels with a value below a certain threshold to zero. A threshold based
mask was created from the average scattering information and applied to the scattering anisotropy visualisation
in Fig. 6b–d. For the scattering anisotropy visualisation in the simulation study (Fig. 4d,e), all voxels outside the
ground truth sample boundary were set to zero.

Fibre pellet assembly phantom.  The fibre pellet phantom shown in Fig. 8 which is an assembly of dif-
ferent stick pellets composed of industrially relevant fibre-reinforced materials was measured and analysed.
This assembly is a multi-material validation sample where the fibre or tubular structures are aligned along the
axial direction of each stick as can be seen in the Supplementary Fig. S2. The experimental conditions were the
same as in “Validation sample” except that the projection images were acquired with 30 keV . The used high-
aspect ratio circular grating array specific for 30 keV was fabricated with an optimised deep reactive ion etching
process into a silicon substrate with a circular pattern mask generated by e-beam l­ithography24. This π-shift
circular grating array had the same dimension as the array used in the previous experiment but a different grat-
ing depth dictated by the chosen energy. The beam size was 11.6 × 3.5 mm2 and the effective FOV achieved with
stitched scans was 26.2 × 22.5 mm2 . The number of unit cells (circular patterns) in the FOV was 264 × 227 . The

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scintillator-detector assembly was placed at a distance L = 74.1 cm from the grating array. One hundred projec-
tion images were acquired in a continuous manner and the exposure time for each projection image was 10 ms.
The sample was reconstructed from data acquired with the stairwise acquisition scheme with n = 1 and n = 5 .
It was also reconstructed from data acquired with a spiral acquisition protocol with n = 5 . With all acquisi-
tion schemes used, it was possible to recover, at least qualitatively, the expected fibre orientations as shown in
Fig. 8d. In order to provide a comparison with the measured data, an arbitrary projection angle was chosen at
a tilted view of 22.5◦ . The measured and the forward projection images for this angle are shown in Fig. 8e. The
directional scattering signal (visibility reduction) V in the projection plane was modelled with a cosine function
V (γ ) = a0 + a1 cos (γ − γmain )20. The three parameters a0 , a1 and γmain were extracted by Fourier analysis. a0
represents the average scattering and the degree of anisotropy is computed as the ratio a1 /a0 . γmain is the main
direction of the underlying structure. These three parameters are coded with the HSV colouring scheme: H as
the main orientation, S as the degree of scattering anisotropy, V as the average scattering. The colour coded pro-
jection images are shown in Fig. 8e where H and S are mapped by the colour wheel. V appears as the brightness
of the pixel (dark as V approaches 0, bright as V approaches 1). The acquisition protocol with n = 1 ( β = 0◦ )
gave a forward projection image which deviated the most from the measured projection whereas the other two
protocols with n = 5 gave much similar projection images. These experimental results are in agreement with
the previous sections.

Discussion
The in-silico as well as the experimental studies show that simple protocols compatible with fast acquisition
schemes are possible. In general for higher accuracy the number of turns n has to be at least > 1 . If the acquisi-
tion speed needs though to be maximised, for instance for studying fast dynamic processes, the spiral acquisi-
tion protocol with n = 1 can provide sufficient accuracy for many applications. If even further simplification is
unavoidable, for example if using complex sample environments for which fast simultaneous rotation around 2
axes is cumbersome, acquisition at a fixed tilt angle is also a viable solution. This fixed tilt angle should though be
chosen carefully and in most cases the trivial selection of β = 0◦ is not the optimal choice as shown by the null
space analysis and the different reconstruction studies. This is because of the missing wedge problem for a certain
angular range where the fibres are aligned parallel to the beam and all fibres on the axial plane are affected by the
missing wedge problem with a fixed tilt angle of β = 0◦ . A fixed tilt angle of β = 22.5◦ provides superior results
compared to the trivial choice and similar accuracy to the spiral protocol with n = 1 because of beam vectors
off the axial plane unlike the case of a fixed tilt angle of β = 0◦ . Even though a system with 2 axes of rotation is
in principle required also for the fixed tilt angle case to ensure flexibility in the selection of β , rotation around a
single axis during data acquisition strongly simplifies all synchronisation aspects, not irrelevant at high speed,
potentially leading to less uncertainties in the reconstruction process of the final volume. For specific applica-
tions, e.g. to increase the stability of the setup, a single rotation stage firmly mounted with the rotation axis at a
defined angle with respect to the beam can also be an option to consider.
The advantage of n at least > 1 by a constant number of projection is clear and a relevant observation was made
by a previous scanning SAXS based tensor tomography study that the reconstruction accuracy is more related to
having a sufficient number of turns n than having a larger total number of ­projections17. For the reconstruction
volume sizes in our experimental studies, 100 projections lead to undersampled tomographic datasets; we have
nonetheless decided to use such a small number of projections with small n values in the presented experiments
to effectively push the acquisition speed with fast tensor tomography applications in mind. The effect of further
reducing the number of projections leading to extremely sparse datasets in conjunction with the proposed
acquisition protocols needs though to be investigated but is beyond the scope of this study.
A direct quantitative comparison of our method to existing tensor tomography methods of all involved aspects
is not straightforward and beyond the scope of this work. Our method in general has a larger voxel size compared
to the existing methods and thus it may yield lower spatial resolution with the absorption contrast. However,
microstructure is indirectly revealed by the small-angle scattering signal in scattering tensor tomography rather
than directly resolved by detector pixels. Thus, spatial resolution is often not of the main importance for tensor
tomography and the effective spatial resolution is rarely reported in published studies. Scans are rather optimised
for different purposes and different samples, and different sources are used. We still would like to note that it is
in general clear that the large acquisition overhead intrinsic in the scanning SAXS geometry limits this method
to small samples and makes it unsuitable for imaging industrially relevant large volumes or dynamic processes.
On the other hand, reported grating interferometric studies with linear gratings are almost exclusively performed
on conventional lab-based sources. Therefore, it is meaningless to directly compare the scan time because the
exposure time for a single radiographic projection is significantly longer than at a synchrotron. Nevertheless, the
need of rather complex trajectories and phase stepping with linear gratings causes frequent discontinuities in the
acquisition process increasing the overall overhead even if this technique would be used with a higher flux source.
With our method at synchrotron facilities, the exposure time for each single radiographic projection is usu-
ally in the order of a few to a few tens ms. Using an n = 1 protocol with 100 projections continuously acquired,
mostly sufficient for the experimental configurations used in this study, one full omni-directional scattering
tensor tomographic volume covering e.g. 16 × 16 × 4 mm3 = 1 cm3 , with a spatial resolution in the order of
50 to 100 µm can be acquired in less than 1 s . This means that macroscopic, statistically relevant samples (e.g.
10 cm3 ) can be routinely investigated in a matter of minutes even taking into account the overhead related to
sample movements for stitched scan. Alternatively, if a dynamic process is of interest, it is possible to follow the
same evolving volume through time.

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Conclusion
In this study, comparative analyses were presented for simple acquisition protocols optimally suited for rapid
scattering tensor tomography. First, the null space was significantly reduced by substituting conventional linear
with circular gratings already when the tilt angles or the number of spiral turns n were just 1. This first math-
ematical evidence highlighted the potential of using a circular grating array for fast scattering tensor tomography
with simple acquisition geometries with a fairly small n. Second, simulation studies with an in silico sample
showed that the reconstructed volumes were already close to the ground truth with n ≤ 3 , regardless of the used
acquisition protocol. Lastly, experimental studies provided results that were in agreement with the null space
analysis as well as with the simulation results demonstrating the robustness of the technique with respect to the
unavoidable experimental uncertainties.
We conclude that, with a circular grating array, the suggested simple acquisition schemes with a fairly small
number of turns n are inherently sufficient in providing directional scattering information for scattering tensor
tomography. Thus, the proposed acquisition protocols build the basis towards rapid inspection and/or time-
resolved X-ray scattering tensor tomography in the near future. In principle, the proposed acquisition protocols
are compatible with and can be easily transferable to X-ray tube setups and the range of applications can be
expanded to industrially more relevant problems. In addition, the presented framework of the null space analysis
will be useful to assess and optimise in advance an arbitrary acquisition protocol for X-ray scattering tensor
tomography. Even though this work is based on a circular grating array, the proposed acquisition protocols can
actually to be also directly transferred to any tensor tomography modality with omnidirectional scattering sensi-
tivity such as speckle pattern and omnidirectional simultaneous reciprocal and real space imaging based methods.

Data availability
The datasets generated and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on
reasonable request.

Received: 7 June 2021; Accepted: 27 October 2021

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Acknowledgements
This work received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant 765604 (MUMMERING)
and EUROSTARS INFORMAT E! 11060. The experiments were performed at the TOMCAT beamline, Swiss
Light Source (SLS), Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), Switzerland. We thank the SLS cSAXS beamline for allowing
us to modify and use their sample stage. We thank Xnovo Technology ApS, Denmark for providing the fibre
pellet phantom.

Author contributions
J.K. conceived and conducted the null space and the simulation studies. J.K., M.K., and F.M. conceived and
conducted the experiments. J.K. analysed and visualised the results. M.K and Z.S. fabricated the gratings. M.K.,
F.M. and M.S. conceived the MUMMERING project providing the basis for this work. J.K. wrote the manuscript
with contribution from all co-authors.

Competing interests 
The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information
Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://​doi.​org/​
10.​1038/​s41598-​021-​02467-w.
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to M.K. or F.M.
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