Model-Based Detection of Radioactive Contraband for Harbor Defense Incorporating Compton Scattering Physics
The detection of radioactive contraband is a critical problem is maintaining national security for any country. Photon emissions from threat materials challenge both detection and measurement technologies especially when concealed by various types of shielding complicating the transport physics significantly. This problem becomes especially important when ships are intercepted by U.S. Coast Guard harbor patrols searching for contraband. The development of a sequential model-based processor that captures both the underlying transport physics of gamma-ray emissions including Compton scattering and the measurement of photon energies offers a physics-based approach to attack this challenging problem. The inclusion of a basic radionuclide representation of absorbed/scattered photons at a given energy along with interarrival times is used to extract the physics information available from the noisy measurements portable radiation detection systems used to interdict contraband. It is shown that this physics representation can incorporated scattering physics leading to an 'extended' model-based structure that can be used to develop an effective sequential detection technique. The resulting model-based processor is shown to perform quite well based on data obtained from a controlled experiment.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 992758
- Report Number(s):
- LLNL-CONF-425060; TRN: US1007831
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Presented at: IEEE OCEANS '10, Sydney, Australia, May 24 - May 27, 2010
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Physics-based, Bayesian sequential detection method and system for radioactive contraband
Radioactive Contraband Detection: A Bayesian Approach