A plastic scintillator-based muon tomography system with an integrated muon spectrometer
Abstract
A muon scattering tomography system which uses extruded plastic scintillator bars for muon tracking and a dedicated muon spectrometer that measures scattering through steel slabs has been constructed and successfully tested. The atmospheric muon detection efficiency is measured to be 97% per plane on average and the average intrinsic hit resolution is 2.5 mm. In addition to creating a variety of three-dimensional images of objects of interest, a quantitative study has been carried out to investigate the impact of including muon momentum measurements when attempting to detect high-density, high-Z material. As expected, the addition of momentum information improves the performance of the system. For a fixed data-taking time of 60 s and a fixed false positive fraction, the probability to detect a target increases when momentum information is used. This is the first demonstration of the use of muon momentum information from dedicated spectrometer measurements in muon scattering tomography.
- Publication:
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Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A
- Pub Date:
- October 2015
- DOI:
- 10.1016/j.nima.2015.06.054
- Bibcode:
- 2015NIMPA.798...12A
- Keywords:
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- Cosmic-ray muon;
- Multiple Coulomb scattering;
- Tomography;
- Large-volume inspection;
- Muon tomography;
- Scintillation detector