Integration of neutron image methods for the ANCIENT CHARM Project

Ralf SCHULZE¹ / Petra KUDEJOVA² / Lea CANELLA² / Martin EBERT³ / Thomas MATERNA⁴ / Jan JOLIE¹ / Tamas BELGYA⁵ / László SZENTMIKLÓSI⁵ / Zoltan KIS⁵ / Enrico PERELLI CIPPO⁶ / Winfried KOCKELMANN⁷ / Erik SCHOONEVELD⁷ / Peter SCHILLEBEECKX⁸ / ANCIENT CHARM COLLABORATION

(¹Institute for Nuclear Physics, University of Cologne, Germany / ²Technische Universität München, Garching, Germany / ³Research Center Julich, Germany / ⁴Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France / ⁵Institute of Isotopes, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary / ⁶Dipartimento di Fisica ‘Giuseppe Occhialini’, Universita degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy / ⁷ISIS Neutron Spallation Source, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, United Kingdom / ⁸EC-Joint Research Centre, Geel, Belgium)

Outline: the special message of the poster: The integration of several novel methods for non-destructive 3D elemental analysis of cultural heritage objects will be presented.

Several new element sensitive neutron-based imaging methods, like e.g. Prompt-Gamma Activation Imaging (PGAI), a method based on the detection of prompt-gamma radiation emitted during the irradiation with cold neutrons, and Neutron Resonance Transmission (NRT), based on the position sensitive detection of transmission spectra of epithermal neutrons, have been developed in the frame of the European ANCIENT CHARM Project. They were tested on replica test objects and on real objects of archaeological interest. Because these methods utilize neutrons of different energy ranges the acquired data-sets originate from different setups which do not share a common laboratory coordinate system. Therefore procedures and tools had to be developed to align these data-sets in space to be able to present the gained information contents in a consistent way.
The measurements were completed with the well-established cold Neutron Tomography (NT) method to obtain the inner morphological structure of the objects and to guide the positioning of the objects in the neutron beam.
The combination of data from the new imaging methods with NT gives complete 3D information of the structure and elemental composition of the samples. NT may be used to correct for cold neutron attenuation effects, to be able to get semi-quantitative results.
The tools and methods used for the alignment as well as the results obtained from the measurements will be presented.

Keywords: Prompt Gamma Activation Imaging /Ancient Charm / Cold Neutron Tomography / Data Registration