Muon scattering tomography with resistive plate chambers

Muon Scattering Tomography is a scanning technique which uses cosmic muons as probes to gather information on the content of the inspected volume. Because the scattering angle depends on the Z
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of the materials in the volume, it is possible to obtain a 3D image of the volume content by carefully tracking the muon paths. This has very interesting potential applications in several fields, from engineering to homeland security, where MST could be used to inspect shipping containers and trucks in search of special nuclear materials (SNM). For such applications to be feasible it is necessary to have large area detectors (10–100 square meters) while maintaining the efficiency and angular resolution necessary to discriminate between low-Z and high-Z materials. Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) are very good candidates.