Fusion of time-dependent gamma production spectra from thermal neutron capture and fast neutron inelastic scattering to improve material detection ☆

Abstract Neutron-based inspection techniques are unique in their ability to provide material specific signatures, thus offering very high performance and automatic detection of explosives and other contraband. Thermal neutron capture gamma spectroscopy provides excellent sensitivities to hydrogen, nitrogen, chlorine, and other elements, which are characteristic to most explosives, drugs and other contraband that may be smuggled into the country. Fast neutron gamma production (mostly through inelastic scattering) provides good sensitivity to carbon and oxygen. When necessary, these two types of complementary interactions can be combined to yield a more accurate material determination inside small to medium size containers. Standard pulsed 14 MeV electronic neutron generators offer an efficient way to obtain these two types of interactions. Fast (14 MeV) neutrons are produced during the pulse. After the pulse, only the decaying thermal neutron population exists, and thus pure neutron capture gamma-rays are produced. Unfortunately, during the pulse (which is normally much longer than the neutron thermalization time) the fast neutron interactions are highly “contaminated” by the interactions of thermal neutrons within the object and the nearby gamma-ray detectors. This creates high background and spectral interferences in the common medium resolution detectors, such as NaI, BGO, etc. The use of an appropriate shielding, neutron spectrum tailoring, full spectral feature analysis as well as temporal information (“die-away” time) resulted in significant performance enhancements in detection of explosives, drugs and other contraband in difficult geometries.