Wide-angle Compton camera for the monitoring of radioactive materials at border

This project aims to develop a novel design of a Compton camera to detect and monitor the illegal smuggling of radioactive material into the country. This device will enable UK Border Force personnel to passively inspect people, vehicles and cargo entering the border and to detect any concealed sources of ionising radiation. The novelty of this design is two-fold. The first aspect lies in the use of thin rods of dense inorganic scintillating materials as the scattering layer the signals of which are detected at each end with silicon photomultipliers allowing for the interaction position to be determined with high precision. This will allow for similar performance to existing Compton camera devices but will be significantly more portable and inexpensive to operate. This should permit their deployment in locations not currently possible. Also, in these unprecedented times the cost-effectiveness of providing secure borders is increasingly important. The design of this proposed Compton camera is also particularly novel. Both the outer scattering and inner detection layers will form cube geometries permitting the detection of incident gamma radiation from the surrounding environment. While conventional Compton cameras require the device to be pointing at the interrogation subject, this novel design will allow for a more passive approach providing the location of any radioactivity overlaid on video feed in real time. It is anticipated that this ease of interpretation permitted by this new design should allow for its deployment without the need for detailed training.