ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the book and the theme of calculating the x-ray spectra emitted from x-ray tubes. It addresses the reasons why we might need predictions of x-ray tube spectra and the different approaches to calculating such spectra. The coverage and structure of the book is explained. The book consists of three parts: Background (chapters 2–4), Modelling (chapters 5–7), and Applications (chapters 8–10). In this introductory chapter, the software that can be used as a tool for supporting learning is also discussed. The supporting code for the book is based on Python scripts and the open-source spectrum toolkit SpekPy V2 (https://bitbucket.org/spekpy/spekpy_release).
