First experiments on the Australian Synchrotron Imaging and Medical beamline, including investigations of the effective source size in respect of X-ray imaging.

The Imaging and Medical beamline at the Australian Synchrotron achieved ;first light' in December 2008. Here, the first experiments performed on the beamline are reported, which involved both X-ray imaging and tomography studies for a range of samples. The use of a plastic-edge phantom for quantitative measurements of contrast and resolution proved to be very instructive and helped to confirm certain parameter values such as the effective horizontal source size, detector resolution and average X-ray energy for the polychromatic beam.