Far field 3D localization of radioactive hot spots using a coded aperture camera

This paper presents a coded aperture method to remotely estimate the radioactivity of a source. The activity is estimated from the detected counts and the estimated source location, which is extracted by factoring the effect of aperture magnification. A 6 mm thick tungsten–copper alloy coded aperture mask is used to modulate the incoming gamma-rays. The location of point and line sources in all three dimensions was estimated with an accuracy of less than 10% when the source-camera distance was about 4 m. The estimated activities were 17.6% smaller and 50.4% larger than the actual activities for the point and line sources, respectively. - Highlights: • A method is presented to remotely estimate source activity. • The method allows determination of source location from a single projection. • A tungsten–copper alloy coded aperture mask is used to modulate the incoming gamma-rays. • The method was successfully tested for point and line sources.