Image reconstruction from Pulsed Fast Neutron Analysis

Pulsed Fast Neutron Analysis (PFNA) has been demonstrated to detect drugs and explosives in trucks and large cargo containers. PFNA uses a collimated beam of nanosecond-pulsed fast neutrons that interact with the cargo contents to produce gamma rays characteristic to their elemental composition. By timing the arrival of the emitted radiation to an array of gamma-ray detectors a three-dimensional elemental density map or image of the cargo is created. The process to determine the elemental densities is complex and requires a number of steps. The first step consists of extracting from the characteristic gamma-ray spectra the counts associated with the elements of interest. Other steps are needed to correct for physical quantities such as gamma-ray production cross sections and angular distributions. The image processing includes also phenomenological corrections that take into account the neutron attenuation through the cargo, and the attenuation of the gamma rays from the point they were generated to the gamma-ray detectors. Additional processing is required to map the elemental densities from the data acquisition system of coordinates to a rectilinear system. This paper describes the image processing used to compute the elemental densities from the counts observed in the gamma-ray detectors.