The Single Volume Scatter Camera (SVSC) Collaboration is multi-institution effort lead by Sandia National Laboratories to develop portable neutron imaging systems for a variety of applications in non-proliferation and arms control. Current state-of-the-art kinematic neutron imaging systems consist of distributed scintillator volumes in which the position, time, and energy of multiple interactions are used to reconstruct a neutron’s incoming direction. Such systems suffer from poor geometrical efficiency and are ultimately limited in performance by the size of the individual scintillator cells. The SVSC project aims to improve the geometrical efficiency by up to an order magnitude by reconstructing multiple neutron interactions within the same scintillator volume. The concept, overall program goals, and current progress up to date will be presented.
Melinda Sweeny is staff member at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California. She received her Ph.D in physics from the University of California at Davis in 2011, specializing in experimental particle physics. Over the last ten years, she has participated in the research and development of a variety of detection methods and systems for the search and characterization of radiological material, including: border monitoring with a water-based neutron detector, neutrino detection for reactor monitoring, source localization using neutron emissions with double-scatter imaging, and neutron imaging with coded aperture techniques. Her recent work includes detector development for the optically-segmented Single Volume Scatter Camera and Silicon Photomultiplier readout of the scintillator-based detection system.
