Deterministic Bragg Coherent Diffraction Imaging.

A deterministic variant of Bragg Coherent Diffraction Imaging is introduced in its kinematical approximation, for X-ray scattering from an imperfect crystal whose imperfections span no more than half of the volume of the crystal. This approach provides a unique analytical reconstruction of the object's structure factor and displacement fields from the 3D diffracted intensity distribution centred around any particular reciprocal lattice vector. The simple closed-form reconstruction algorithm, which requires only one multiplication and one Fourier transformation, is not restricted by assumptions of smallness of the displacement field. The algorithm performs well in simulations incorporating a variety of conditions, including both realistic levels of noise and departures from ideality in the reference (i.e. imperfection-free) part of the crystal.

Duality between noise and spatial resolution in linear systems.

It is shown that in a broad class of linear systems, including general linear shift-invariant systems, the spatial resolution and the noise satisfy a duality relationship, resembling the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics. The product of the spatial resolution and the standard deviation of output noise in such systems represents a type of phase-space volume that is invariant with respect to linear scaling of the point-spread function, and it cannot be made smaller than a certain positive absolute lower limit. A corresponding intrinsic "quality" characteristic is introduced and then evaluated for the cases of some popular imaging systems, including computed tomography, generic image convolution and phase-contrast imaging. It is shown that in the latter case the spatial resolution and the noise can sometimes be decoupled, potentially leading to a substantial increase in the imaging quality.