Imaging Cargo Containers Using Gravity Gradiometry

Identifying high-density fissile materials inside cargo shipping containers is a current national security need. We propose using the geophysical technique of gravity gradiometry to quickly and accurately image cargo containers to detect high-density materials. To obtain realistic images with sharp boundaries, robust estimators are applied to the model objective function of the inversion operator and coupled with a Huber norm to provide stable numerical computation. Assuming a realistic data acquisition pattern requiring a reasonable amount of time, we show it is possible to identify high-density materials with a volume of 15 cm3 Finally, we provide a recovered density threshold to suggest the presence of high-density materials from an arbitrary recovered density model.

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