Speaker
Description
Abstract: Cosmic-ray muography has emerged as a valuable technique for the non-invasive inspection of geological and industrial structures, such as the assessment of nuclear reactor fuel. Despite its successes, conventional muon imaging methods have faced significant challenges in resolving small-scale structures composed of low atomic number and low-density materials. To address this limitation, our research group has pioneered a novel imaging approach that utilizes cosmic-ray muon induced secondary radiation produced within the target material. By using secondary particles—detected in coincidence with cosmic-ray muons by plastic scintillator detectors and a dedicated muon tracker—we have achieved the first cosmic-ray muon radiographs of bone and soft tissue. These images represent the first radiographic visualisations of organic structures obtained via cosmic rays.
Our research further employs Monte Carlo simulations, conducted with the Geant4 software package, to model the interactions of cosmic-ray muons with various detectors and target materials. These simulations are essential in optimising experimental configurations and deepening our understanding of the underlying imaging processes.
In this work, we present two experimental setups: the MUCA (Muon Camera) system in Novi Sad and the COMIS (Cosmic Muon Induced Secondaries) system in Budapest. The MUCA setup comprises four plastic scintillation detectors (50 cm × 50 cm × 5 cm) and a muon tracker (five CCC boards, 25 cm × 25 cm) positioned above the object under investigation. The COMIS setup features a muon tracker (five CCC boards, 50 cm × 50 cm, with 2 mm resolution) located beneath the object, four large plastic scintillation detectors (50cm × 50cm × 5cm) arranged around the target, and four plastic scintillation detectors (25cm × 25cm × 5cm) under the target-volume. The aim of this research is to advance imaging and compositional analysis of diverse objects—particularly those with low atomic number and density—using only naturally occurring cosmic radiation.
Keywords: cosmic muon imaging; muon secondaries detection; low atomic number materials; Geant4 simulations; coincidence event detection