A Compton imaging device for radioactive material detection

The most serious terrorist threat we face today may come from radiological dispersion devices and unsecured nuclear weapons. It is imperative for national security that we develop and implement radiation detection technology capable of locating and tracking nuclear material moving across and within our borders. Many radionuclides emit gamma rays in the 0.2 -- 3 MeV range. Unfortunately, current gamma ray detection technology is inadequate for providing precise and efficient measurements of localized radioactive sources. Common detectors available today suffer from large background rates and have only minimal ability to localize the position of the source without the use of mechanical collimators, which reduces efficiency. Imaging detectors using the Compton scattering process have the potential to provide greatly improved sensitivity through their ability to reject off-source background. We are developing a prototype device to demonstrate the Compton imaging technology. The detector consists of several layers of pixelated silicon detectors followed by an array of CsI crystals coupled to photodiodes. Here we present the concept of our detector design and results from Monte Carlo simulations of our prototype detector.