The XTRA option at the NEUTRA facility—more than 10 years of Bi-modal neutron and X-ray imaging at PSI

Abstract

Just after the start into the new millennium the concept for combined neutron and X-ray imaging was introduced by extending the standard configuration of the thermal neutron imaging NEUTRA instrument with a complementary 320 kV X-ray tube setup. Using essentially the same detector configuration for both neutron and X-ray imaging enables a pixel-wise (in radiography) and a voxel-wise (in tomography) correlation and combination of attenuation data. The optimal use and analyses of such complementary data sets depend on the specific investigation and research question and range from a combinatory interpretation of separately analyzed images to full data fusion approaches. Here, several examples from more than a decade of bimodal neutron and X-ray imaging at NEUTRA at PSI shall be reviewed.