The hard spectrum which is available on the BAMline at Berlin's synchrotron BESSY offers the rare opportunity to perform high-resolution X-ray imaging experiments with a partially coherent beam. This thesis work reports on the development of a new tomography system, including Fresnel-propagated imaging, and its application to three specific materials science problems from the fields of engineering materials, biology and earth science: A) 2D and 3D images were recorded from a variety of aluminum-based alloys to characterize coarsening of particle agglomerates (at high solid volume fraction) in...