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Activity Number:
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264
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Type:
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Invited
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Date/Time:
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Tuesday, August 8, 2006 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
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Sponsor:
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Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences
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| Abstract - #305217 |
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Title:
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Tomographic Imaging Using Background Cosmic Radiation
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Author(s):
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Nicolas Hengartner*+
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Companies:
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Los Alamos National Laboratory
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Address:
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Statistical Sciences Group, Los Alamos, NM, 87545,
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Keywords:
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tomographic imaging ; inverse problems ; design of instrument
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Abstract:
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Existing radiographic methods are inefficient for detecting shielded nuclear materials and potentially present radiation hazards to inspectors and vehicle passengers. Recent advances at the Los Alamos National Laboratory suggest a promising alternative: Use the natural scattering of muons---produced by the decay of cosmic rays showering Earth---as a passive radiographic probe to image passively dense objects. Muons interact with matter primarily through the Coulomb force. We model the net effect of that interaction as a random change in the path of the muon, with the magnitude of that change depending on the atomic number of the material traversed. In this talk, I will discuss the tomographic reconstruction of the scattering density of an object from measured changes in the paths of individual muons traversing that object.
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