Muon tomography: Tracks reconstruction and visualization techniques

The Muon Portal is a project funded by the Italian Ministry of Research, that aims to develop a system able to detect radioactive materials inside containers, to counteract the illegal transfer, by means of muon tomography. This novel technique bases its functioning on the properties of some particles of the secondary cosmic radiation: the muons. These affect the Earth's surface at a flow rate constant and interact weakly with matter being deflected significantly only when they pass through material with a high atomic number. In this paper the author will focus on issues related to the reconstruction and visualization of tracks within the scanned object, presenting the results of some track reconstruction algorithms such as the POCA and the EM-Likelihood, and integrated techniques of simulation and visualization of tomographic images in 3D with algorithms based on volume rendering and isosurfaces.