Design study simulations of a Compton camera for radioactive waste container imaging

Continued research and development efforts are being pursued to improve accuracy, minimize costly overestimates, and increase analysis throughput for non-destructive analysis (NDA) of radioactive waste containers. An imaging detector capable of locating and identifying source distributions in a waste container can improve the estimates obtained from an NDA system. This paper presents the approach taken to data handling and analysis for a simulation-based system design study. Simulations were first performed to sample a large, multiparameter design space and were then refined to focus on candidate geometries that proved to have acceptable performance. To handle the anticipated volume of data and to allow efficient search and analysis, a system was devised to organize the simulation and analysis effort, track data files, and construct a data base. Data were evaluated to determine functional relationships between design parameters and performance. A set of performance metrics were developed and applied to compare the results of the simulations.