Gantryless Associated-Particle Imaging: A New Paradigm

This work reports on the development of new techniques to enable in-field fast-neutron radiography measurements using associated-particle imaging (API). These methods utilize transmission neutron data to perform a data-driven detector localization of a pixelated fast-neutron panel with respect to the neutron source. This data-driven localization allows for in-field neutron radiography, even for cases in which the source-detector geometry does not allow for a normalization measurement and is not well known a priori. It also enables accurate image stitching, even for low resolution detector panels and for cases in which there is a small amount of overlap between individual images. These techniques are needed to enable field deployable API imaging systems where the source and detector are positioned by hand rather than held with respect to each other by a gantry. This presentation will discuss the system calibrations needed for subsequent analysis, the data-driven detector localization method, the process of calculating a normalization for a given source-detector geometry, and the method used to stitch images together.