Information extraction for muon radiography

The paths of muons traveling through matter are affected by Coulomb multiple scattering. The magnitude of that interaction depends on the radiation length of the traversed medium, with high-Z matter scattering more than low-Z matter. The net effect on the path of a muon through an object is both a change in the direction and an orthogonal displacement orthogonal. Both these quantities can be measured experimentally for individual muons, opening the possibility of tomographic reconstruction of the radiation lengths of unknown complex objects. We present a framework to characterize the ability to reconstruct the scattering density from muon scattering data for detecting and locating areas of high Z material. Our analysis shows the importance of having detectors with large aperture, and the importance of using both the change in angle and displacement.