Hawk: the image reconstruction package for coherent X-ray diffractive imaging

The past few years have seen a tremendous growth in the field of coherent X-ray diffractive imaging, in large part due to X-ray free-electron lasers which provide a peak brilliance billions of times higher than that of synchrotrons. However, this rapid development in terms of hardware has not been matched on the software side. The release of Hawk is intended to close this gap. To the authors' knowledge Hawk is the first publicly available and fully open source software program for reconstructing images from continuous diffraction patterns. The software handles all steps leading from a raw diffraction pattern to a reconstructed two-dimensional image including geometry determination, background correction, masking and phasing. It also includes preliminary three-dimensional support and support for graphics processing units using the Compute Unified Device Architecture, which speeds up processing by orders of magnitude compared to a single central processing unit. Hawk implements numerous algorithms and is easily extended. This, in combination with its open-source licence, provides a platform for other groups to test, develop and distribute their own algorithms. Hawk is available under the GNU General Public License from http://xray.bmc.uu.se/hawk.