Ray tracing of optical systems using NURBS surfaces

We present a study on the applicability of non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) to carry out accurate ray tracing of x-ray beams for optical systems. We describe how to represent the most typical optical surfaces by exploiting the mathematical and algorithmic properties of NURBS. The intersection points between rays and NURBS surfaces are calculated using a Bezier-clipping algorithm, a prototype implementation of which is presented. A comparison with the results given by a standard x-ray tracing code for some cases of interest in synchrotron radiation optics is also presented.