High-contrast imaging for weakly diffracting specimens in coherent diffraction imaging

Coherent diffraction imaging (CDI) and ptychography techniques bypass the difficulty of having high-quality optics in X-ray microscopy by using a numerical reconstruction of the image that is obtained by inverting the diffracted intensity recorded by a charge-coupled device array. However, the reconstruction of the image from the intensity data obtained from a weakly diffracting specimen is known to be difficult because of the obvious reduction in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In this case, the specimen only slightly modifies the probe diffraction pattern, resulting in difficulty in the identification of the detailed structure of the specimen from the reconstructed image because of the poor contrast and sharpness of the image. To address this situation, a modification in the image retrieval algorithms used in the iterative reconstruction of the image is suggested. This modification should double the presence of high spatial frequencies in the diffraction pattern to enhance the contrast and edge detection in existing imaging techniques.