International Workshop on X-Ray and Neutron Phase Imaging With Gratings: Tokyo, Japan 5-7 March 2012

Since the discovery of X-rays, transmission imaging has been used extensively for a variety of fields, taking advantage of the high penetrating power of X-rays. However, because it uses X-ray absorption to generate image contrast, X-ray transmission imaging has a drawback that its sensitivity is poor to weakly absorbing objects consisting mainly of light elements, such as polymers and biological soft tissues. Since the 1990s, X-ray phase imaging, which relies on the measurement of the X-ray phase shift (or X-ray refraction) caused by a sample, has attracted attention, because weakly absorbing objects could be imaged. Particularly in this decade, X-ray phase imaging based on grating optics has been studied actively thanks to its practical advantage that laboratory X- ray sources are usable, while other earlier techniques of X-ray phase imaging were developed and performed mainly in synchrotron radiation facilities. Therefore, grating-based X-ray phase imaging has attracted special attentions from the medical and industrial fields. Moreover, a similar technique is expanding to neutron phase imaging field for various other materials including metal. This proceedings volume contains 47 papers presented at the first workshop held in Tokyo to provide an opportunity for discussion and to promote new collaborations in this rapidly growing field.