Title :
Radioscopic inspection of cargo containers with megavoltage energy barriers
Author :
Mandava, Ajay K. ; Zhang, Lei ; Regentova, Emma E. ; Wilson, Zane ; Chen, Gongyin
Author_Institution :
Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA
Abstract :
To perform the inspection of cargo containers the radioscopic screening is performed by switching between 6 and 9 MeV of boundary energies as rapidly as 200 times per second and measuring the penetration levels in the contents of cargo. This technology facilitates the material identification via the analyses of the ratios of signals obtained at nominal and dual energies, which are 6 and 9 MeV, respectively. The techniques are developed for (a) visualizing the contents to produce an image suitable for fast inspection by a human operator, and for (b) prompting the custom personnel about the location of suspicious objects. Specifically, nuclear materials are of interest. The experiments have been conducted with Linatron K9 device designed by Varian Security and Inspection Products. The capabilities are demonstrated for detection of objects of interests for the steel shields of 10 inches of thickness.
Keywords :
X-ray imaging; freight containers; image processing; materials handling; Linatron K9 device; boundary energy switching; cargo container inspection; dual energy signal; material identification; megavoltage energy barriers; nominal energy signal; radioscopic inspection; voltage 6 MV; voltage 9 MV; Containers; Energy barrier; Energy measurement; Humans; Inspection; Performance evaluation; Personnel; Signal analysis; Signal processing; Visualization; Cargo Imaging; Dual Energy X-Ray; Material Discrimination;
Conference_Titel :
Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 2009. SMC 2009. IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
San Antonio, TX
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-2793-2
Electronic_ISBN :
1062-922X
DOI :
10.1109/ICSMC.2009.5346791