The MIMA project. Design, construction and performances of a compact hodoscope for muon radiography applications in the context of Archaeology and geophysical prospections

TL;DR

The MIMA project developed a compact muon telescope for non-invasive imaging of dense underground structures, aiming to validate muon radiography for archaeological and geophysical applications.

Contribution

It introduces a new lightweight muon detector specifically designed for archaeological and geophysical investigations, with performance validation and hardware optimization.

Findings

Successfully designed and built a compact muon telescope

Demonstrated effectiveness in archaeological and geophysical imaging

Used as a test platform for hardware performance improvements

Abstract

The Muon Imaging for Mining and Archaeology (MIMA) project aims at the development of a non-invasive technique for imaging dense structures or cavities, hidden in the underground or anyway surrounded by huge volumes of matter, based on Muon Absorption Radiography. Given its natural multidisciplinary, the final purpose is the validation of this methodology for applications in different fields, like Archaeology, Geology, mining, Civil Engineering and Civil Protection, in close cooperation with team in these fields. In this paper we report on the design, construction and performance of a compact and lightweight muon telescope designed mainly for archaeological investigation and geophysical prospections in general. The MIMA detector is also used currently as a test instrument to study different hardware solutions to optimize the global performance in these types of applications.