Multi-energy X-ray detectors to improve air-cargo security

摘要

X-ray based systems have been used for decades to screen luggage or cargo to detect illicit material. The advent of energy-sensitive photon-counting x-ray detectors mainly based on Cd(Zn)Te semi-conductor technology enables to improve discrimination between materials compared to single or dual energy technology. The presented work is part of the EUROSKY European project to develop a Single European Secure Air-Cargo Space. "Cargo" context implies the presence of relatively heavy objects and with potentially high atomic number. All the study is conducted on simulations with three different detectors: a typical dual energy sandwich detector, a realistic model of the commercial ME 100 multi-energy detector marketed by MULTIX, and a ME 100 "Cargo": a not yet existing modified multi-energy version of the ME 100 more suited to air freight cargo inspection. Firstly, a comparison on simulated measurements shows the performances improvement of the new multi-energy detectors compared to the current dual-energy one. The relative performances are evaluated according to different criteria of separability or contrast-to-noise ratio and the impact of different parameters is studied (influence of channel number, type of materials and tube voltage). Secondly, performances of multi-energy detectors for overlaps processing in a dual-view system is accessed: the case of orthogonal projections has been studied, one giving dimensional values, the other one providing spectral data to assess effective atomic number. A method of overlap correction has been proposed and extended to multi-layer objects case. Therefore, Calibration and processing based on bi-material decomposition have been adapted for this purpose.