INSIGHT

The in situ GIXS heuristic tool for efficient reduction of grazing-incidence scattering data

INSIGHT (In-Situ GIXS Heuristic Tool) is a python-based data reduction and visualization tool for 2D detector data of in-situ grazing-incidence X-ray small- and wide-angle scattering with powerful batch processing abilities to help investigate the time-evolution of the inner morphology in thin films.

Publication

The INSIGHT publication in the Journal of Applied Crystallography is available at https://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/paper?S1600576723011159.
M. A. Reus, L. K. Reb, D. P. Kosbahn, S. V. Roth and P. Müller-Buschbaum, J. Appl. Cryst. 57 (2024); DOI: 10.1107/S1600576723011159.

Access to software

Please write an email to insight@ph.tum.de to get the latest version of INSIGHT. Demo scripts and documentation are also available.
The software is open source and available under the GNU General Public License version 3 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

Feature overview

  • transform 2D GIXS data tto reciprocal space
  • perform tube-cuts, cake-cuts, pseudo XRD cuts
  • visualize data s qr-qz plots, chi-q plots
  • 3D detector rotation possible
  • workflow without data loss possible
  • use fixed or dynamic geometry parameters (e.g., SDD or inca changes in in situ experiments)
  • applying masks, flatfield corrections, gap masks
  • intensity corrections: angular pixel sensitivity, air attenuation, polarization
  • subtracting background in GIWAXS tube cuts
  • correcting tilt
  • removing hot pixels
  • investigating count distributions
  • image processing such as smoothing or upsampling
  • easy and advanced plotting features for GIWAXS and GISAXS
  • saving raw or reduced data and plots
  • investigating and fitting isolated q-region
  • tracking the fitting parameters during evolution
  • SDD normalization for each image

Version changelog

0.2.2 (11.11.2023)

  • GIWAXS simulations: extended functionality for GIWAXS simulations (see demo_GIWAXSindexing.py), add missing wedge simulation, add functionality to plot reflexes inside the missing wedge
  • add the option to do GISAXS cuts in qy or qr space, depending on the user's choice
  • fix unit handling in plotting: INSIGHT always uses inverse angstroms (NOT inverse nm)
  • fix and update demo scripts
  • extend demo scripts for batch processing
  • fix some plotting issues

0.2.1 (28.04.2023)

  • use Qt5Agg as standard matplotlib backend

0.2.0 (26.04.2023)

  • 10x faster
  • GIWAXS simulation and indexing added
  • many new demo files for multiple use cases
  • heavily improved plot_reshaped_image() function
  • functions to import tube/cake cuts for creating 2D-time evolution plots
  • easier fitting of cuts

Context:

Efficient reduction of 2D grazing-incidence X-ray scattering (GIXS) data becomes more computational demanding with technical developments that increase the detector time-resolution and pixel number. Thus, we are developing INSIGHT that allows for computationally efficient reduction of GIXS data, giving full access to the raw data while a first reduction can be done directly at the beamline.

Developed by Manuel A. Reus & Lennart K. Reb.

Contact: insight@ph.tum.de