3D cosmic-ray muon tomography using portable muography detector

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the feasibility of 3D muon tomography for infrastructure using a portable detector with plastic scintillating fibers, successfully reconstructing the positions of lead blocks at different heights through simulation and experiment.

Contribution

It introduces a portable muography detector with an ML-EM based 3D imaging method for infrastructure-scale targets, showing consistent results in simulation and real measurements.

Findings

Reconstructed block positions match prior knowledge

Successful 3D imaging with portable detector

Potential for infrastructure-scale muography

Abstract

A feasibility demonstration of three-dimensional (3D) muon tomography was performed for infrastructure equivalent targets using the proposed portable muography detector. For the target, we used two sets of lead blocks placed at different heights. The detector consists of two muon position-sensitive detectors, made of plastic scintillating fibers (PSFs) and multi-pixel photon counters (MPPCs) with an angular resolution of 8 msr. The maximum likelihood-expectation maximization (ML-EM) method was used for the 3D imaging reconstruction of the muography simulation and measurement. For both simulation and experiment, the reconstructed positions of the blocks produce consistent results with prior knowledge of the blocks' arrangement. This result demonstrates the potential of the 3D tomographic imaging of infrastructure by using eleven detection positions for portable muography detectors to image infrastructure scale targets.