Innovative Gamma source finding array

The high stress situations facing Security Staff responsible for detecting radiological threats to the United States is complicated by the need to identify these threats in complex backgrounds of natural and/or legitimately transported medical and industrial radiation sources. Although the operational constraints vary, a common need is to quickly provide Specific Isotope and Source Location information to enable situational assessment. Considerable gains have been made in developing and deploying the next generation of Isotope Identifiers but no acceptable tool is available outside of the laboratory for accurately and quickly resolving the Source Angular Location without heavy, movable shield material. Preliminary modeling by Space Micro indicates that the capabilities of Lanthanum Halides used in recent Isotope Identifiers coupled with an innovative geometric array and a unique algorithm will exploit the properties of Lanthanum Halides to enable resolving source angular direction to better than 15o. This Phase I proposal is for laboratory confirmation that this predicted angular resolution can be achieved and to provide a technical foundation for product commercialization. Since the scintillation material is commercially available, this approach will facilitate a relatively low risk program to quickly produce field prototypes that meet the performance requirements of our Homeland Defense Operators.