Three-energy radiography method for uniformity control of composite materials including components with different effective atomic numbers

Presently, most X-ray security systems for luggage inspection use dual-energy detector. A drawback of this approach is that overlap in energy sensitivity of the low- and high-energy detectors creates the potential for ambiguity and inaccuracy. We have made an attempt to improve the identification quality of organic materials using a three-energy receiving–detecting circuit. New model calculations and several new algorithms for the detection of organic and nonorganic materials under multi-energy radiography were proposed, developed and experimentally verified. The purpose of the present work is study of the possibility of separation between substances with small effective atomic numbers for increasing the detection probability of explosives. Using a spectrum of the X-ray tube with a tungsten anode, evaluation has been carried out of the signal ratio from high-energy detector, medium-energy detector and low-energy detectors. Using differential energy sensitivity of detectors of different thickness, varying X-ray source anode voltages and filter for each array, special software it is possible to reconstruct images of the inspected object at the different energy scales. It was shown that using standard X-ray beams and specially-chosen scintillator types with different thicknesses, we can achieve accuracy in determination of Zeff up to 95%, that significantly better as compared with systems based on conventional X-ray inspection. Using two-coordinate identification palette, one can discern between imitators of explosives even when the difference in their Zeff values is small (from 7.08 to 8.07).