High speed, low dose, intelligent X-ray cargo inspection

The security market requirements for high throughput rail cargo radiography inspection systems include better than 5 mm line pair imaging resolution, penetration beyond 400 mm steel equivalent, scan speeds of up to 60 km/h, material discrimination (four groups of Z) in 100 % of cargo at speeds reaching 45 km/h, low dose and small radiation exclusioi zone. In order to achieve these requirements, which cannot be met by conventional dual energy radiography systems, a team lead by RadiaBeam Technologies, LLC (RBT) has initiated a research into new radiography methods and imaging detector materials with the goal of developing an Adaptive Railroad Cargo Inspection System (ARCIS). The ARCIS technical concept relies on linac-based, adaptive, ramped energy source of packets of short X-ray pulses sampled by a new type of fast X-ray detectors with rapid hardware processing for intelligent linac control, and advanced radiography image processing and material discrimination analysis. The following ARCIS key enabling technologies overcome the limitations of the conventional dual energy interlaced cargo inspection systems: Multi-energy material discrimination in a single scan line provided by packets of short pulses from an X-ray source with end-point energy ramp up (> 1 MHz rate of energy switching); Real-time intelligent setting of packet's maximum energy depend on X-ray attenuation in cargo; Fast Scintillation-Cherenkov detectors with reduced sensitivity to scatter radiation; Detector readout with Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) provides time-resolving of short X-ray pulses; Self-control adaptive dynamic adjustment of SiPM responsivity in detector channel for increased dynamic range.