Investigation of Continuous Scan Methods for Rapid Data Acquisition

It is common practice to perform spatially resolved X-ray data acquisition by automatically moving components to discrete locations and then measuring beam intensity with the system at rest. While effective, scanning in this manner can be time consuming, with motors needing to accelerate, move and decelerate at each location before recording data. Information between data points may be missed unless fine grid scans are performed, which accounts for a further increase of scan time. Recent advances in commercial hardware and software enables a continuous scan capability for a wide range of applications, which saves the start and end of step motors. To compare scanning performance, both step and continuous scan modes were examined using the SPEC command language with both commercial and inhouse hardware. The advantages and limitations of each are discussed.