Application of local tomography technique to high-resolution synchrotron X-ray imaging

X-ray CT method is a kind of nondestructive inspection, but has strong limitation in sample size due to a small field of view (FOV). The higher the resolution, the smaller FOV is, mainly due to the element number of available detectors commercially. Therefore, sample machining is more or less necessary so that the sample size is fit within the small FOV in the case of the high-resolution observation. Local tomography technique enables a high resolution reconstruction of small region of interests within a sample without the sample machining. In this study, we have evaluated the size effects of aluminum foam samples in terms of the 3D image quality by the local tomography techniques.