The diffraction-enhanced imaging (DEI) is a powerful tool to observe tumors and other diseases in breast tissue and provide more precise diagnostics. In this work DEI was used to analyze breast tissues details that have poor attenuation contrast. An X-ray imaging system with DEI techniques was developed using synchrotron radiation. The DEI experiment was performed in D10A-XRD2 beamline at the Brazilian Synchrotron-LNLS. The pre-monochromator, upstream of the beamline was adjusted to 10.7 keV. The samples were positioned between two channel-cut Si(3 3 3) in non-dispersive geometry mounted in a double axes diffractometer. A direct conversion water-cooled CCD camera of 1242 pixel × 1152 pixel of 25 μm × 25 μm each was used as a two-dimensional detector in scanning mode. The DEI system could show details in low attenuation tissues based on the contrast imaging obtained by attenuation, refraction gradient and ultra-small angle scatter characteristics. In this work the capacity to observe different types of structures and details in breast tissues were investigated. © 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.683 SUPPL.3740Chapman, D., Thomlinson, W., Johnston, R., Diffraction enhanced X-ray imaging (1997) Phys Med Biol, 42, pp. 2015-2025Hasnah, M., Oltulu, O., Zhong, Z., Chapman, D., Application of absorption and refraction matching techniques for diffraction enhanced imaging (2002) Rev Sci Instrum, 73, pp. 1657-1659Lagomarsino, S., Cedola, A., X-ray microscopy and nanodiffraction (2004) Encyclopedia Nanosci Nanotechnol, 10, pp. 681-710Ingal, V.N., Beliaevskaya, E.A., X-ray plane-wave topography observation of the phase contrast from a non-crystalline object (1995) J Phys D: Appl Phys, 28, pp. 2314-2317Davis, T.J., Gao, D., Gureyev, T.E., Stevenson, A.W., Wilkins, S.W., X-ray image contrast from a simple phase object (1995) Nature, 373, pp. 595-598Menk, R.H., Rigon, L., Arfelli, F., Diffraction-enhanced X-ray medical imaging at the ELETTRA synchrotron light source (2005) Nucl Instrum Methods Phys Res A, 548, pp. 213-220Dilmanian, F.A., Zhong, Z., Ren, B., Computed tomography of x-ray index of refraction using the diffraction enhanced imaging method (2000) Phys Med Biol, 45, pp. 933-946Zhong, Z., Thomlinson, W., Chapman, D., Sayers, D., Implementation of diffraction-enhanced experiments: at the NSLS and APS (2000) Nucl Instrum Methods Phys Res A, 450, pp. 556-567Rigon, L., Besch, H., Arfelli, F., A new DEI algorithm capable of investigating sub-pixel structures (2003) J Phys D: Appl Phys, 36, pp. A107-A112Giles, C., Hönnicke, M.G., Lopes, R.T., First experiments on diffraction-enhanced imaging at LNLS (2003) J Synchrotron Radiat, 10, pp. 421-423Rocha, H.S., Lopes, R.T., Valiante, P.M., Diagnosis of thyroid multinodular goiter using diffraction-enhanced imaging (2005) Nucl Instrum Methods Phys Res A, 548, pp. 175-180Rocha, H.S., Lopes, R.T., Pessôa, L.M., Diffraction-Enhanced Imaging for studying pattern recognition in cranial ontogeny of bats and marsupials (2005) Nucl Instrum Methods Phys Res A, 548, pp. 228-233