A novel reconstruction algorithm based on density clustering for cosmic-ray muon scattering inspection

Abstract

As a relatively new radiation imaging method, the cosmic-ray muon scattering imaging technology can be used to prevent nuclear smuggling and is of considerable significance to nuclear safety. Proposed in this paper is a new reconstruction algorithm based on density clustering, aiming to improve inspection quality with better performance. Firstly, this new algorithm is introduced in detail. Then in order to eliminate the inequity of the density threshold caused by the heterogeneity of the muon flux in different positions, a new flux correction method is proposed. Finally, three groups of simulation experiments are carried out with the help of Geant4 toolkit to optimize the algorithm parameters, verify the correction method and test the inspection quality under shielded condition, and compare this algorithm with another common inspection algorithm under different conditions. The results show that this algorithm can effectively identify and locate nuclear material with low misjudging and missing rates even when there is shielding and momentum precision is low, and the threshold correcting method is universally effective for density clustering algorithms.

Keywords

• Radiation imaging
• Reconstruction algorithm
• Cosmic-ray muon
• Nuclear safety