Preliminary theoretical approach for materials elemental composition identification using X - Rays spectral transmission data

The paper describes a method for detection of chemical elemental composition of organic and inorganic compounds by measuring X-Ray attenuation at different energies. The method is based on the fact that the mass attenuation coefficient of a composed substance is a linear combination of the individual atoms mass attenuation weighed by the mass ratio factors. Using individual energy bin attenuation law equations, the algorithm involves an iterative method for finding best solution of linear equations system. The method was tested using attenuation data from NIST XCOM database with simulated noise. During the simulation process different values of signal to noise (SNR) ratio and different…