The spatial resolution achievable in topographic images can be limited by one or several of three factors:
the resolution (grain or pixel size) of the detector, the experimental geometry, and intrinsic diffraction effects.
First, the spatial resolution of an image can obviously not be better than the grain size (in the case of film) or the pixel size (in the case of digital detectors) with which it was recorded. This is the reason why topography requires high-resolution X-ray films or CCD cameras with the smallest pixel sizes available today. Secondly, resolution can be additionally blurred by a geometric projection effect. If one point of the sample is a "hole" in an otherwise opaque mask, then the X-ray source, of finite lateral size S, is imaged through the hole onto a finite image domain given by the formula
where I is the spread of the image of one sample point in the image plane, D is the source-to-sample distance, and d is the sample-to-image distance. The ratio S/D corresponds to the angle (in radians) under which the source appears from the position of the sample (the angular source size, equivalent to the incident divergence at one sample point). The achievable resolution is thus best for small sources, large sample distances, and small detector distances. This is why the detector (film) needed to be placed very close to the sample in the early days of topography; only at synchrotrons, with their small S and (very) large D, could larger values of d finally be afforded, introducing much more flexibility into topography experiments.
Thirdly, even with perfect detectors and ideal geometric conditions, the visibility of special contrast features, such as the images of single dislocations, can be additionally limited by diffraction effects.
A dislocation in a perfect crystal matrix gives rise to contrast only in those regions where the local orientation of the crystal lattice differs from average orientation by more than about the Darwin width of the Bragg reflection used. A quantitative description is provided by the dynamical theory of X-ray diffraction. As a result, and somehow counter-intuitively, the widths of dislocation images become narrower when the associated rocking curves are large. Thus, strong reflections of low diffraction order are particularly appropriate for topographic imaging. They permit topographists to obtain narrow, well-resolved images of dislocations, and to separate single dislocations even when the dislocation density in a material is rather high. In more unfavourable cases (weak, high-order reflections, higher photon energies), dislocation images become broad, diffuse, and overlap for high and medium dislocation densities. Highly ordered, strongly diffracting materials – like minerals or semiconductors – are generally unproblematic, whereas e.g. protein crystals are particularly challenging for topographic imaging.
Apart from the Darwin width of the reflection, the width of single dislocation images may additionally depend on the Burgers vector of the dislocation, i.e. both its length and its orientation (relative to the scattering vector), and, in plane wave topography, on the angular departure from the exact Bragg angle. The latter dependence follows a reciprocity law, meaning that dislocations images become narrower inversely as the angular distance grows. So-called weak beam conditions are thus favourable in order to obtain narrow dislocation images.