REAL-SPACE DISTRIBUTIONS FROM SMALL-ANGLE SCATTERING DATA - STRUCTUREINTERFERENCE METHOD VERSUS INDIRECT TRANSFORMATION METHOD

The indirect transformation method (program ITP) developed by Glatter since 1977 is still one of the most popular methods for obtaining real -space information from small-angle scattering data. In order to valid ate the novel structure interference method (SIM), a comparison of the two methods has been performed with both simulated and experimental d ata. Although no explicit smoothing criterion is used in SIM, the solu tions are less influenced by oscillations, termination effects are sma ller and higher real-space resolution is obtained compared with ITP. I t has been found that the structure interference method is very robust even in the case of incomplete data (h(1) R(max) > pi) where the indi rect transformation method fails to find a physically meaningful solut ion.