Development and transition of X-ray diffraction imaging technology
X-ray diffraction is the gold standard for structural analysis of materials ranging from biological samples to explosives, and provides material information about a sample that is fundamentally orthogonal to conventional, transmission imaging. Although usually referred to as ‘nondestructive’, traditional X-ray diffraction using a diffractometer requires sample preparation such as cutting, grinding, or powderizing samples. While this form of sample preparation can produce useful, informative XRD measurements at a single point, it is inherently destructive and sacrifices relative spatial information. Thus, despite its material specificity, conventional XRD is incompatible with most applications in detection and diagnosis. In this talk, I will focus on the computational imaging approaches to 2D and 3D X-ray diffraction imaging that we have developed and the opportunities afforded by this approach across multiple applications, including cancer mapping, explosives detection, and material identification. In addition, I will discuss my own experience working to transition our proof of concept experiments at the University into commercial systems through my spinout company, Quadridox.
Bio
Dr. Joel Greenberg is a co-Founder and the President, CEO, and CTO of Quadridox, a private company dedicated to commercializing innovative computational X-ray imaging systems. He is the inventor of various coded aperture X-ray diffraction imaging (XRDI) technologies and has spent the last 10 years studying the science and engineering behind XRDI, developing prototype hardware and software systems, and demonstrating their efficacy in the medical and security spaces. He is the author/editor of the book X-ray Diffraction Imaging, holds several patents, and has written over 40 papers on the subject. Dr. Greenberg has also lead the development of physics-based synthetic data at Quadridox, including the QSim RT platform and virtual bag packing tools. Dr. Greenberg has a B.S.E. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Physics from Duke University and has been a member of the faculty in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and Medical Physics Program at Duke University since 2014.