Transactions of the Korean Nuclear Society Spring Meeting
Jeju, Korea, May 7-8, 2015
Design Verification of a High Energy X-ray Scanner for Cargo Inspections with the Stereo
Visualization
Suhyun Lee a*, Chang Hwy Lim a, Jeong ho Kim b, Myung-Kook Moon a and Jongyul Kim a
a
Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Daedeok-daero, Yuseong, Daejeon 305-353, Korea
b
School of Mechanical Engineering, Pusan National University, San 30, Jangjeon-dong, Keumjeong-gu, Busan, 609-
735, Korea,
*
Corresponding author: [email protected]
1. Introduction 2. System Configuration
As the issue of homeland security is being The cargo inspection system mainly consists of the
emphasized since the attacks on September 11, the beam generator part, the collimator part and the detector
radiation technology is recognized as one of the proper part. Each part has key role to allow the full system to
way to strengthen border security. Especially, work with high performance. In this section, detail
radiography technique is an effective means to inspect descriptions of each part will be given below.
cargo, personal belongings, and vehicles. This is
because radiography is not only non-destructive testing, 2.1 Accelerator
but also a very fast and stable way despite it is an oldest
technique. The electron accelerator will be playing key role to
We had been developed a cargo container inspection generate gamma ray for cargo imaging. Unlike other
system based on high energy X-ray imaging technique. vehicles inspection system, the accelerator generates
This system will play an important role for the logistics dual-energy beam, energy of 6 MeV and 9 MeV. This
at Gwangyang Port. The inspection system is designed dual energy system allows us to discriminate what the
to visualize the inside of a container with stereovision. items are made from. The generated electrons from the
The schematic structure of the full system is displayed accelerator are collided with a tungsten target, whose
in Fig. 1. It comprises an electron LINAC whose beam thickness is 2.8 mm, and then high energy photons are
energies are 6 MeV/9 MeV, three steel collimators and generated. These photons will be utilized to get
two set of detector array. transmission images. To get transmission image of the
In this study, validity verifications of the design of cargo made of thick metal, the accelerator and X-ray
the system have been carried out with Monte Carlo conversion target should make high energy photon at
simulations for the precise technical design. The central least 0.5 MeV.
goal in this research asks that the designed system is
suitable enough for the purpose, which is to inspect
cargo container in fast and with good visualization
performance.
Fig 2. The wire-frame view of the geometry setup for the
Geant4 Simulations
Fig 1. The bird’s-eye view of the cargo inspection system with 2.2 Collimators
a control facility
For the 3D visualization of stereotype, the X-ray
This paper is organized as follows: Sec. 1 provides beam has to deliver two directions. Therefore, the
the description of the specific parts of the system. Sec 2 collimators should be designed to divide the emitted X-
presents the idea for Monte Carlo simulation. Sec. 3 ray into two directions. Unfortunately, the photons
describes simulation results and a suggestion for the generated from the accelerator with the tungsten target
best performance in specific purposes. Finally, Sec. 4 have random momentum direction. In addition, these
gives a summary and future perspectives. photons can make noise signal in terms of visualization.
Transactions of the Korean Nuclear Society Spring Meeting
Jeju, Korea, May 7-8, 2015
For those reasons, three collimators will be constructed. nuclear engineering and the field of radiation shielding.
Each collimator has two slit, then one slit tilts owing to Especially, Geant4 has visualization ability; the code
make tilting beam. In addition, the collimators prevent makes it possible to understand how to improve the
that scattered photons pass by detector arrays. design with ease. Furthermore, since the energy cut of
Geant4 is lower than that of the MCNP, Geant4 is able
2.3 Detector Array to calculate with wide range of energy. [1]
The detector array is to detect X-ray photons, which 3.1 Geant4 Setup
have information of the inside of a cargo container. The
detector part comprises two detector arrays. The two The geometrical configuration is presented in Fig. 2
arrays are identical in shape, structure and size but with wireframe view. The particle source in this
different in angle. One array, which is projected to the simulation (particle gun) is placed in front of the X-ray
beam window, is inclined by the given angle about y- conversion target. And three collimators are placed
axis. An array is compose of 1024 CdWO4 crystals, along the z-axis. The detector arrays, which are 3 cm
which is a commonly used for high energy photon long, are placed after third collimator. The two built-in
counting. physics list, QGSP_BERT_HP, QGSP_BIC_HP,
EmLivermore utilized to calculate behaviors of particles
due to energy range of interests and accuracy. [2]
3. Results
The simulation code has provided spatial distribution
according to angle at significant points such as W target
and detector array as shown in Fig. 4 and Fig. 5. It can
give an insight about the geometrical coverage of the
system according to beam current.
Fig. 4 shows that the directions of photons emitted at
Fig 3. The calculation result of the photon generation and its the W target; most of photons have large longitudinal
delivery. This picture shows that three collimators are able to momentum. Fig. 5 indicates the intensity of the beam at
prevent scattered photons the detector; the number of photons at a detector array
depends on tilting angle of the X-ray beam. [3]
3. Simulations 600 0° 2°
4° 6°
8°
500
Geant4 was used to perform this simulation. Geant4
is a widely used Monte Carlo simulation code that has 400
been developed at the European Organization for
A.U.
Nuclear Research (CERN) for calculations of particle 300
transportation.
200
100
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
Cell
Fig 5. The spatial distribution of photons at detector arrays
according to angle of tilting beam. The detectors are regarded
as perfect counters.
Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 are shown that energy spectra of
Fig 4. The energy spectrum of photons right after tungsten emitted photons according to different energy of 6
target with 9 MeV electron beam. Azimuthal angle about z- MeV/9 MeV. To get images with high resolution, high
axis is mapped on the angle. Polar angle in on the radius. The energy photons whose energy is higher than 2 MeV
beam intensity is weighted by surface element of polar must be generated enough in case of realistic beam
coordinate.
current due to the thickness of a cargo container
housing, which is made of high density materials. [4]
As Geant4 has been updated steadily, Geant4 is being
In this result, at least 1 photon with high energy is
put to use in various fields such as medical applications,
Transactions of the Korean Nuclear Society Spring Meeting
Jeju, Korea, May 7-8, 2015
generated in 10 events despite that most of photons
have low energy below 2 MeV.
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0.02
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Eγ [MeV]
Fig 7. The energy spectrum of photons right after tungsten
target with 6 MeV electron beam. This result is calculated
with EmLivermore model.
4. Conclusion
The simulation test of the design of the cargo
container inspection system has been carried out using
Geant4, which is a widely used Monte Carlo code. The
calculation is to expect whether the geometrical design
is able to visualize the inside of a cargo with reasonable
coverage and the results give an insight to achieve the
goal.
Acknowledgment
We gratefully acknowledge support from the Korea
Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST).
This research was a part of the project titled ‘Research
on Fundamental Core Technology for Ubiquitous
Shipping and Logistics’ funded by the Ministry of
Oceans and Fisheries, Korea (Grant No.
10802514H380000110).
