Emission Tomography in the Determination of The
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EMISSION TOMOGRAPHY IN THE DETERMINATION OF THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF NEUTRON INDUCED RADIONUCLIDES GLYN DAVIES A thesis submitted to the University of Surrey for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 1989 ProQuest Number: 10798376 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10798376 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT Work has been carried out to investigate the applicability of Neutron Induced Emission Tomography (NIET) to areas of non-destructive testing within the nuclear industry. The principal application was the scanning of irradiated nuclear fuel rods. In addition to its medical uses, tomography has been employed in many areas of non-destructive testing. However, the applications have generally used transmission tomography to examine structure. NIET provides a method of determining the spatial distribution of radionuclides produced by the action of neutrons by activation or fission processes. This has applications as an extension of neutron activation analysis and as a method of non-destructive testing for use in the nuclear industry. The work has involved the use of a number of experimental tomography scanners. Various test objects have been scanned using both emission and transmission tomography and computer programs were developed to collect, process and reconstruct the data. High resolution detectors were used to scan single and multi-energetic radionuclides in test objects designed to model various characteristics of nuclear fuel rods. The effects of scattering on image quality were examined and a method of scattering correction based upon the use of an additional energy window was applied. The work showed the viability of using NIET to study the distribution of radionuclides within objects such as irradiated fuel pellets. It also demonstrated the need for reducing the scattering component within ii images. The use of narrow energy windows and a high resolution detector were shown to be succesful in reducing the effects of scattering. The employment of scattering correction using additional energy windows was shown to be necessary when scanning multi-energetic radionuclides. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Nicholas Spyrou for his interest, encouragement and guidance throughout the long period leading to the production of this thesis. I wish to thank Professor DF Jackson and the Physics Department at the University of Surrey for making the work possible. I also wish to thank Dr TB Pierce, my industrial supervisor at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, for providing both financial support and the facilities at Harwell without which the work could not have been performed. I also express my gratitude to John Huddleston and Ian Hutchinson for their invaluable practical support during the work at Harwell. I am grateful to all my colleagues in the Physics Department at Surrey for providing a stimulating environment to work in, especially to Fatai Akintunde Balogun for all the discussions about tomography, scanners and scattering. It has taken a long time from leaving Surrey •to arriving at this thesis and I thank all those who prompted me to find time to write and not to give up. Finally, I thank the Science and Engineering Research Council for their support of this work. CUN TEN I d ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv CONTENTS V INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 THE DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATIONS OF TOMOGRAPHY 3 1.1 The Introduction of Tomography 3 1.2 Medical Tomography 4 1.2.1 Transmission tomography 4 1.2.2 Emission tomography 9 1.3 Industrial Tomography 12 1.3.1 Industrial transmission tomography 12 1.3.2 Industrial Positron Emission Tomography(PET) 15 1.3.3 Industrial emission tomography 15 1.3.4 Neutron Induced EmissionTomography (NIET) 15 CHAPTER 2 RECONSTRUCTION FROM PROJECTIONS 21 2.1 The Aim of Reconstruction 21 2.2 Collection Geometry 25 2.3 Realization in Practice 26 2.4 Back-projection or Linear Superposition - the 27 Summation Technique 2.5 Analytic Reconstruction Methods 30 2.5.1 Two dimensional Fourier reconstruction 30 2.5.2 Filtered back-projection or linear summation 34 with compensation 2.5.3 Interpolation 42 2.5.4 Discrete implementation of filtered back- 43 projection 2.6 Iterative Reconstruction Methods 45 2.6.1 The basis for iterative methods 45 v 2.6.2 The use of iteration 48 2.6.3 The Algebraic Reconstruction Technique (ART) 49 2.6.4 The Iterative Least Squares Technique (ILST) 51 2.6.5 Simultaneous Iterative Reconstruction 52 Technique (SIRT) 2.6.6 How iterative methods compare 52 2.6.7 Maximum entropy and maximum likelihood methods 53 2.6.8 Weighting factors and reconstruction constraints 54 2.7 Limitations to Reconstruction 55 2.7.1 Aliasing 56 2.7.2 The Gibb's phenomenon 56 2.7.3 Finite iteration time 57 2.7.4 Limitations in the data 57 CHAPTER 3 INTERACTIONS OF RADIATION WITH MATTER 64 3.1 Introduction 64 3.2 Attenuation Coefficients and Interaction Cross Sections 64 3.3 The Photoelectric Effect 67 3.4 Coherent Scattering 70 3.5 Compton Scattering 71 3.6 Pair Production 73 3.7 Total Cross Section and AttenuationCoefficients 74 3.8 Attenuation Within Compounds 76 3.9 Detectable Length Fractions 76 3.10 Parameterization 77 CHAPTER 4 EMISSION AND TRANSMISSION TOMOGRAPHY 79 4.1 Introduction 79 4.2 Transmission Tomography . 79 4.2.1 Scanning geometry 81 4.3 Emission Tomography 82 4.3.1 The emission raysum 83 4.4 Attenuation Correction for Emission Tomography 84 vi 4.4.1 Preprocessing methods 85 4.4.2 Intrinsic methods 90 4.4.3 Postprocessing methods 96 4.4.4 Hybrid iteration methods 96 4.4.5 A comparison of techniques 101 4.4.6 Physical correction methods 102 4.5 The Effects of Scattering on Imaging 104 4.5.1 Radiation detectors and spectroscopy 105 4.5.2 Scattering within shields and sources 116 4.5.3 The total spectrum 117 4.5.4 The effect of scattering on transmission 118 tomography 4.5.5 The effect of scattering on emission tomography 120 4.5.6 The use of high resolution detectors 123 4.5.7 Correction methods for scattered radiation 124 CHAPTER 5 EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEM 130 5.1 The Scanning System 130 5.1.1 The scanner mechanism and drive electronics 130 5.1.2 Collimation and shielding 134 5.1.3 The detectors and the acquisition electronics 134 5.1.4 The controlling computer 138 5.2 Development Work with Alternative Systems 138 5.3 The Scanning Procedure 140 5.3.1 Alignment artefacts 141 5.3.2 Data packing 144 5.4 Reconstruction Programs 147 CHAPTER 6 INITIAL EXPERIMENTS - RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 150 6.1 Introduction 150 6.2 Initial Experiments at Surrey 150 6.2.1 Scans using a silicon lithium detector 150 6.2.2 Mercuric iodide detectors 152 vii 6.2.3 Europium-152 scans 154 6.3 Initial Experiments at Harwell 157 6.3.1 Scans using HPGe and Nal(Tl) detectors 157 6.3.2 Scans using Tc-99m 164 CHAPTER 7 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 173 7.1 Introduction 173 7.2 Tantalum-Titanium Experiments 174 7.2.1 Design of the test object 174 7.2.2 Collimation and energy windows 179 7.2.3 Results 181 7.2.4 Summary 195 7.3 Chromium-Titanium Experiments 196 7.3.1 Design of the test object 196 7.3.2 Collimation and energy windows 199 7.3.3 Results 203 7.3.4 Summary 211 7.4 Fuel Rod Scan 211 7.4.1 Introduction 211 7.4.2 Results 212 7.4.3 Summary 212 CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSIONS 214 8.1 Further Work 219 REFERENCES 223 viii INTRODUCTION The word tomograph means image of a slice. It is the aim of reconstructive tomography to produce an image of a slice through an object free of interference from other slices. This is performed by measuring projections of the slice and the nature of the measurements determines the property of the slice to be reconstructed. The most common form of tomography is X-ray transmission which produces images of the distribution of attenuation in the object. This is widely used in medicine and as an industrial method of non-destructive testing. The measurement of photons emitted from an object forms the basis of emission tomography where the property of interest is the distribution of radionuclides within the object. Emission tomography is widely used in Nuclear Medicine for obtaining information about physiological function but also has other applications. In industry for example, tracers could be used to measure deposition within pipes. Objects which have been irradiated in a neutron flux, either for the purpose of neutron activation analysis or as components of a reactor core are ideal subjects for inspection with emission tomography. This introduces the concept of Neutron Induced Emission Tomography (NIET) where emission tomography is used to examine irradiated objects. This technique can be used as an extension of instrumental neutron activation analysis for elemental analysis and also as a procedure in the nuclear industry for examining such things as irradiated nuclear fuel rods. This work was carried out with the assistance of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell who aim to use NIET as a method of examining irradiated fuel as part of their research.