Imaging of heavily shielded sources

With our Compton Camera, thanks to it’s high spatial resolution and good signal/noise ratio, it is possible to image on a single aquisition:

  1. Heavily shielded sources;
  2. Weaknesses in source shielding using diffused photons;
  3. In some case even the shielding itself.

In this case we are observing a high activity (>1GBq) 92Ir source inside a the Uranium shielding of a gammagraph.

The source is shielded by at least 10 cm of Uranium. The observation time is 5 min:

1 – Using the weak 882 keV Line from 92Ir it is possible to clearly see the shape of the Iridium source:

2 – Using diffused photons around 600 kev we see the mechanism for moving the source (i.e weaknesses in the shielding)

3 – Using Breamstrahlung photons from 234 Pa present in Uranium shielding we see the Uranium shielding