NONDESTRUCTIVE INSPECTION USING COMPTON SCATTER TOMOGRAPHY

A method for non-invasively generating tomographic images of electron density in materials using Compton scattered gamma rays is investigate d. Electron density is an indicator of density or composition changes in a material. In Compton scatter tomography, the energy distribution of monoenergetic gamma rays is measured after scattering from a materi al target, Measuring a scattered gamma ray's energy localizes the scat tering position to a definable region of the sample. We develop an ana lytic computational model to study the image quality of a realistic sy stem. In particular, the deleterious effects of finite source and dete ctor size, Compton broadening, and Poisson noise are investigated. A b ackprojection algorithm is presented to demonstrate the impact of thes e effects on image reconstruction and contrast recovery. Detection of corrosion in low-Z materials is an application of interest, and is use d to study the Compton scatter tomography technique.