NQR-based explosives detection—an overview

Nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) is a radio frequency spectroscopic technique that can be used to detect solid-state compounds containing quadrupolar nuclei, a requirement fulfilled by most high explosives (and narcotics). In this paper, we present an overview of recent research in the detection of explosives using this technique. We also present mathematical models for the data for different acquisition techniques and discuss different state of the art detection algorithms. Finally, we evaluate various algorithms on measured and simulated NQR data.