Bio-inspired digital signal processing for fast radionuclide mixture identification

M. Thevenin; O. Bichler; C. Thiam; C. Bobin; V. Lourenço

doi:10.1117/12.2177032

22 May 2015 Bio-inspired digital signal processing for fast radionuclide mixture identification

M. Thevenin, O. Bichler, C. Thiam, C. Bobin, V. Lourenço

Proceedings Volume 9455, Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNE) Sensing XVI; 94550D (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2177032
Event: SPIE Defense + Security, 2015, Baltimore, MD, United States

Abstract

Countries are trying to equip their public transportation infrastructure with fixed radiation portals and detectors to detect radiological threat. Current works usually focus on neutron detection, which could be useless in the case of dirty bomb that would not use fissile material. Another approach, such as gamma dose rate variation monitoring is a good indication of the presence of radionuclide. However, some legitimate products emit large quantities of natural gamma rays; environment also emits gamma rays naturally. They can lead to false detections. Moreover, such radio-activity could be used to hide a threat such as material to make a dirty bomb. Consequently, radionuclide identification is a requirement and is traditionally performed by gamma spectrometry using unique spectral signature of each radionuclide. These approaches require high-resolution detectors, sufficient integration time to get enough statistics and large computing capacities for data analysis. High-resolution detectors are fragile and costly, making them bad candidates for large scale homeland security applications. Plastic scintillator and NaI detectors fit with such applications but their resolution makes identification difficult, especially radionuclides mixes. This paper proposes an original signal processing strategy based on artificial spiking neural networks to enable fast radionuclide identification at low count rate and for mixture. It presents results obtained for different challenging mixtures of radionuclides using a NaI scintillator. Results show that a correct identification is performed with less than hundred counts and no false identification is reported, enabling quick identification of a moving threat in a public transportation. Further work will focus on using plastic scintillators.

Citation Download Citation

M. Thevenin, O. Bichler, C. Thiam, C. Bobin, and V. Lourenço "Bio-inspired digital signal processing for fast radionuclide mixture identification", Proc. SPIE 9455, Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNE) Sensing XVI, 94550D (22 May 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2177032

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available