Inspired by 'Tetris', researchers develop better radiation detector

The spread of radioactive isotopes from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011 and the continuing threat of possible radiation releases from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility in Ukraine's war zone pose a challenge to detecting and monitoring radioactive materials. This highlighted the need for effective and reliable methods. isotope. Less dramatically, the daily operation of nuclear reactors, the mining and processing of uranium into fuel rods, and the disposal of spent nuclear fuel also require monitoring for radioisotope releases.

Now, researchers at MIT and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have devised a computational foundation for designing a very simple and streamlined version of a sensor setup that can accurately determine the direction of distributed radiation sources. did. We also demonstrated that by moving the sensor and taking multiple readings, we could pinpoint the physical location of the source. The inspiration for their clever innovations came from a surprising source. It's the popular computer game Tetris.

The team's findings, which are likely to have applications in detectors for other types of radiation, were published in Nature Communications by MIT professors Minda Li, Lin-Wen Hu, Benoît Faugier, and Gordon Causse. It is described in a paper published by Graduate students Ryotaro Okabe and Shangjie Xue. Research Scientist Jayson Vavrek SM '16, LBNL '19 Ph.D. There are many other researchers at MIT and Lawrence Berkeley.

Radiation is typically detected using semiconductor materials, such as cadmium zinc telluride, which undergo an electrical reaction when hit by high-energy radiation such as gamma rays. However, since radiation easily passes through materials, it is difficult to determine the direction of the signal by simple counting. For example, a Geiger counter simply makes a clicking sound when it receives radiation, without resolving the energy or type, so similar to how handheld metal detectors work, to find a radiation source, you need to make the loudest sound possible. You have to move around to find it. This process requires the user to be close to the radiation source, which can increase risk.

To provide directional information from a stationary device without getting too close, researchers use an array of detector grids and another grid called a mask. The mask imprints different patterns on the array depending on the direction of the light source. The algorithm interprets the varying timing and strength of the signals received by each individual detector or pixel. This often complicates detector design.

Typical detector arrays for sensing the direction of radiation sources are large and expensive, containing at least 100 pixels in a 10 × 10 array. But researchers have discovered that they can nearly match the accuracy of larger, more expensive systems by using just four pixels arranged in the tetromino shape of the “Tetris” game shapes. . The key is for the computer to properly reconstruct the angle of arrival of the rays based on the time each sensor detected the signal and the relative strength detected by each sensor. This is reconstructed through his AI-guided study of simulated systems.

The researchers tried various configurations of the four pixels, including square, S-shape, J-shape, and T-shape, but through repeated experiments they found that the S-shape arrangement gave the most accurate results. . This array read orientation to within about 1 degree, but all three irregular shapes performed better than squares. The approach was “literally inspired by Tetris,” Lee said.

The key to making the system work is to place insulating materials, such as lead sheets, between the pixels to increase the contrast of radiation readings hitting the detector from different directions. The leads between pixels in these simplified arrays serve the same function as the more elaborate shadow masks used in larger array systems. The research team found that less symmetrical configurations could provide more useful information from smaller arrays, explains Okabe, the study's first author.

“The benefit of using smaller detectors is in terms of engineering costs,” he says. Not only are the individual sensing elements, typically made of cadmium zinc telluride (CZT), expensive, but all the interconnections that convey information from these pixels are also more complex. “The smaller and simpler the detector, the better in terms of applications,” he adds.

There are other versions of simplified arrays for radiation detection, but many are only effective when the radiation comes from a single local source. These can be confused by multiple sources or sources spread across space, but the Tetris-based version is better able to handle these situations, added Xue, co-lead author of the work.

In a single-blind field test using a real cesium radiation source at Berkeley Lab, led by Vavrek, the MIT researchers did not know the location of the ground-truth source, but the test equipment was able to detect direction and position with high precision. Distance to the sound source.

“Radiation mapping is of paramount importance to the nuclear industry because it helps quickly identify radiation sources and keep everyone safe,” said co-author Dr. said one Forget.

Vavrek, another co-lead author, said that while the study focused on gamma-ray sources, the computational tools they developed to extract directional information from a limited number of pixels are “much more general-purpose.” He said he believed that. It is not limited to specific wavelengths and can also be used for neutrons, other forms of light, and ultraviolet light, added Fu, a senior scientist at MIT's Nuclear Reactor Research Institute.

Additional research team members include Ryan Pavlovsky, Victor Negat, Brian Quiter, and Joshua Cates of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Jiangkai Yu, Tongtong Liu, and Stephanie Liu of MIT. Including Mr. Jegelka. This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.

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