Neural Network Methods for Radiation Detectors and Imaging

TL;DR

This paper reviews how deep neural networks enhance radiation detection and imaging, focusing on data generation, processing methods, hardware acceleration, and emerging analog neuromorphic platforms for real-time, energy-efficient analysis.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of current deep learning techniques, hardware solutions, and future directions like optical neural networks for radiation imaging applications.

Findings

Deep learning enables fast inference on edge devices.

Hardware accelerators face physical limits, prompting new analog neuromorphic solutions.

Edge computing reduces energy consumption and allows real-time analysis.

Abstract

Recent advances in image data processing through machine learning and especially deep neural networks (DNNs) allow for new optimization and performance-enhancement schemes for radiation detectors and imaging hardware through data-endowed artificial intelligence. We give an overview of data generation at photon sources, deep learning-based methods for image processing tasks, and hardware solutions for deep learning acceleration. Most existing deep learning approaches are trained offline, typically using large amounts of computational resources. However, once trained, DNNs can achieve fast inference speeds and can be deployed to edge devices. A new trend is edge computing with less energy consumption (hundreds of watts or less) and real-time analysis potential. While popularly used for edge computing, electronic-based hardware accelerators ranging from general purpose processors such as central processing units (CPUs) to application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) are constantly reaching performance limits in latency, energy consumption, and other physical constraints. These limits give rise to next-generation analog neuromorhpic hardware platforms, such as optical neural networks (ONNs), for high parallel, low latency, and low energy computing to boost deep learning acceleration.