Technology Overview

Muons

Muons are subatomic particles created in the Earth’s upper atmosphere as a result of interactions with cosmic rays. They are the natural result of decayed pions and kaons and are part of normal background radiation. They continuously rain down upon the Earth. In fact, each minute of every day 10,000 muons per square meter fall to the Earth and harmlessly penetrate everything in their path. 

Muon Tomography

Tomography is the process of generating a three-dimensional image slice or section of a solid object. “Tomography” is commonly used in medical x-ray applications such as CT scans. In x-ray and CT scans, the tomographs are created using active, ionizing x-ray radiation. In muon tomography, naturally occurring muons are used to drive the imaging process. Decision Sciences’ MMPDS uses muon tomography and proprietary methodologies to produce three-dimensional images of cargo containers and the objects within them.

Muon Safety

Muons are not harmful to humans or cargo. Every day millions of muons naturally pass through each of us. Muon tomography avoids the problems inherent with active radiation scanning methods such as x-ray inspection because the muon screening process does not introduce artificially- generated radiation into cargo scanning operations.

Muon Penetration Properties

Muons readily penetrate thick, dense cargo. Decision Sciences exploits the penetration and interaction properties of muons as they move through dense objects to detect and locate High-Z materials (materials that could be used to shield nuclear threat materials) such as lead and tungsten, as well as High-Z threat objects such as the Special Nuclear Materials highly enriched uranium and plutonium.

Muon Deflection Properties

As muons penetrate an object they display deflection characteristics which are specific to the material and its configuration. Using proprietary software and powerful algorithms, Decision Sciences tracks muon deflections within an area of interest and uses this information to reconstruct the position, distribution, density and atomic number of materials the muons have passed through.

Muon Tomography and Decision Sciences

Decision Sciences harnesses muon tomography to provide security scanning personnel with tools that quickly and accurately inspect shipping containers, vehicles and objects for the presence of nuclear threat materials without using artificially-generated ionizing radiation or physically intrusive inspection methods.

Technology Advancements

Decision Sciences has successfully demonstrated three-dimensional imaging of medium and high-Z materials using MT technology. The MT 3D Imaging video on the right was acquired from our full-scale prototype using preliminary reconstruction algorithms updating in real time. The image of the test scene shown was acquired over an extended scan time, but as early as 40 seconds into a scan, scenes containing simple medium-Z clutter are presenting clear evidence of the presence (or absence) of a high-Z threat object. The Company is aggressively proceeding with full statistical analysis of the scanner's capabilities and the implementation of more advanced techniques which will lead to improved material identification, imaging resolution, and overall performance.

The MMPDS also leverages advances in Gamma-Ray technology to further reduce the country's nuclear threat vulerability.