Scientists can now see the 3D chemical makeup of an object 40 times faster than before using a math trick from 'ghost imaging.'
April 15, 2026
Original Paper
Direct volumetric reconstruction for highly compressive x-ray fluorescence ghost tomography
arXiv · 2604.10671
The Takeaway
If you want to know which elements (like gold, iron, or copper) are inside a sample, you usually have to scan it point-by-point, which takes forever. This paper demonstrates a new method that uses 'ghost tomography' to reconstruct the entire 3D elemental map from 43 times fewer measurements. They did this by using a structured X-ray beam and solving a complex 'inverse problem' to fill in the blanks. This turns a slow, tedious process into a high-speed volumetric capture. For you, this means everything from medical scans to security checks to manufacturing inspections could become nearly instant and much more detailed, revealing the hidden chemistry of objects in seconds.
From the abstract
X-ray fluorescence (XRF) enables element-specific, nondestructive imaging, but conventional raster scanning scales poorly with sample size, particularly for tomography, because measurements must be repeated at every projection angle and spatial position. We demonstrate direct volumetric XRF ghost tomography, which replaces point-by-point acquisition with compressive structured illumination and multiplexed fluorescence detection. Rather than reconstructing projections at each angle and then apply