Investigating the capability of plastic scintillation detectors in design of a muon radiography system by Geant4 code

Authors

10.22052/6.4.49

Abstract

Imaging and identifying materials with high atomic numbers and densities, especially radioactive materials, is one of the issues that have been especially considered in recent years. Due to some limitations in conventional and old imaging techniques, finding an alternative method is very important. The cosmic muons with an infinite source are one of the sources that have been recently studied for heavy objects imaging, and the major efforts in this field have focused on increasing the accuracy and efficiency of muon radiography systems. Use of plastic scintillator improves the accuracy and reduces the cost of muon radiography. In recent decades, different methods have been proposed for the use of these scintillators in development of muon radiography systems. Since the basis of the work of radiography systems is the spatial resolution of the detector, any study that can increase the accuracy of a muon detection system will ultimately improve the quality of muon radiography system. In this study, using a special configuration of plastic scintillators and photomultiplier tubes, the resolution of the muon location identification on the detector plate is optimized. The simulations performed by Geant4 code for different states, show that the final resolution of the detector plates is about 1 cm and, in terms of the resolution of detection, the best scintillator available for the proposed system is BC-408. In addition, among the examined photomultiplier tube layouts, the most accurate configuration is square alignment with uniform distances and the most suitable angle of positioning of the plates relative to the horizons is 10 degrees.
 

Keywords

References

[1] P. Jenneson. "Large vessel imaging using cosmic-ray muons," Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. 525 (2004) 346–351. [2] K.N. Borozdin, G.E. Hogan, C. Morris, W.C. Priedhorsky, A. Saunders, L.J. Schultz and M.E. Teasdale, “Radiographic Imaging with Cosmic Ray Muons,” Nature 422 (2003) 277–278. [3] S. Pesente, S. Vanini, M. Benettoni, G. Bonomi, P. Calvini, P. Checchia, E. Conti, F. Gonella, G. Nebbia, S. Squarcia, G. Viesti, A. Zenoni and G. Zumerle. “First results on material identification and imaging with a large-volume muon tomography prototype,” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A, 604 (2009) 738–746. [4] H. Tanaka, K. Nagamine, S. Nakamura and K. Ishida, "Radiographic measurements of the internal structure of Mt. West Iwate with near-horizontal cosmic-ray muons and future developments," Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. 555 (2005) 164–172. [5] H. Tanaka, K. Nagamine, N. Kwamura, S.N. Nakamura, K. Ishida and K. Shimomura. Development of a two-fold segmented detection system for near horizontally cosmic-ray muons to probe the internal structure of a volcano," Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A, 507 (2003) 657–669. [6] L. Miramonti, "A plastic scintillator detector for beta particles," Radiation measurements, 35 (2002) 347–354. [7] M. Hohlmann, P. Ford, K. Gnanvo, J. Helsby, D. Pena, R. Hoch and D. Mitra “GEANT4 simulation of a cosmic ray muon tomography system with micropattern gas detectors for the detection of High-Z materials,” IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, 56 (2009) 1356–1363. [8] S. Riggi, P. LaRocca, E. Leonora, D. LoPresti, G.S. Pappalardo, F. Riggi and G.V. Russo, “Geant4 simulation of plastic scintillator strips with embedded optical fibers for a prototype of tomographic system,” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A, 624 (2010) 583–590 [9] L. J. Schultz, K. N. Borozdin, J. J. Gomez, G. E. Hogan, J. McGill, C. Morris, W.C. Priedhorsky, A. Saunders and M.E. Teasdale. "Image reconstruction and material Z discrimination via cosmic ray muon radiography," Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 519 (2004) 687–694. [10] P. Aguiar, E. Casarejos, J. Silva-Rodriguez, J. Vilan and A. Iglesias, "Geant4-GATE simulation of a large plastic scintillator for muon radiography," Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on, 62 (2015) 1233–1238. [11] W.J. Jo, H.-I. Kim, S.J. An, C.Y. Lee, C.-H. Baek and Y.H. Chung, "Design of a muon tomography system with a plastic scintillator and wavelength-shifting fiber arrays," Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 732 (2013) 568–572. [12] C. Morris, K. Borozdin, J. Bacon, E. Chen, Z. Lukić, E. Milner, H. Miyadera, J. Perry, D. Schwellenbach, D. Aberle and W. Dreesen. "Obtaining material identification with cosmic ray radiography," AIP Advances, 2 (2012) 042128. [13] D.E. Groom, M. Aguillar-Benitez and C. Amsler, "Review of particle physics. Particle data group," (2000). [14] G.F. Knoll, Radiation detection and measurement: John Wiley & Sons, (2010).
Journal of Radiation Safety and Measurement
Volume 7, Issue 4 - Serial Number 24
September 2018
Pages 49-64

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics