Processing of diffraction patterns obtained from X-ray diffraction imaging experiments using X-ray free electron laser pulses

In X-ray diffraction imaging (XDI) experiments using X-ray free electron laser (XEFL), X-ray pulses provided at a repetition rate of more than 30 Hz enable us the collection of a large number of diffraction patterns within a short period of time. Diffraction patterns with good signal-to-noise ratios are stochastically obtained depending on the positional coincidence of the XFEL pulses and particles dispersed onto membranes. Because of the large number of diffraction patterns exceeding 31,000 per hour, automatic processing is necessary to efficiently extract those patterns worth analyzing, for instance, through selection regarding signal-to-noise ratio and merging patterns simultaneously recorded by two detectors. Here, a software suite for XFEL-XDI experiments is introduced. The algorithms and the procedures will be helpful for developing data processing software for automatically treating a large amount of two-dimensional data.