Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 59, No. 4, October 2011, pp.

27092713
Calculation of Eective Atomic Number and Normal Density Using a Source
Weighting Method in a Dual Energy X-ray Inspection System
Ji Sung Park and Jong Kyung Kim

Department of Nuclear Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul 133-791, Korea

(Received 18 August 2011, in nal form 14 September 2011)
Among various radiation sources, the conventional X-ray source is widely used in industrial and
medical applications. In spite of its technical advantages, however, analyzing the attenuation factor
at a specic energy band is technically dicult because of a continuous energy feature due to
the bremsstrahlung eect. If the physical properties of an inspected object are to be obtained by
using an X-ray source, the energy-resolving X-ray method reecting the characteristic of continuous
energy is a very useful tool. In this paper, the eective atomic number (Z
e
) and normal density
() obtained by using the source weighting method on a dual energy X-ray inspection system are
presented and discussed. Benchmark calculations by using simulation experiments were performed
using four dierent materials, i.e., polyethylene, acetal, urethane, and TNT, and to verify the
methods, we carried out attenuation experiments using four polymerized compounds. The eective
attenuation coecients (
1
,
2
) of the experiment object at the source energies E
1
and E
2
were
calculated using measured transmitted spectra. Using the ratio of
1
to
2
, we then calculated the
eective atomic number and the normal density. As a calculated result, the eective atomic numbers
of each material were within 7% of the reference value, and the normal densities were within 4% of
the reference values except for polyethylene with an 8% relative dierence. This observation leads us
to the conclusion that the source weighting method is valid for calculating the eective attenuation
coecient, eective atomic number, and normal densities in the X-ray inspection system.
PACS numbers: 32.80.Cy, 78.70.Ck, 42.25.Ba, 87.59.Bh
Keywords: Compton scattering, X-ray, Dual energy, Attenuation coecient
DOI: 10.3938/jkps.59.2709
I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, as incidents of terrorism have increased
rapidly, the interest in and the requirement for inspection
systems have increased internationally. Specically, air
terrorism has been the main target of terrorists because
a small amount of explosive may cause large casualties.
For this reason, several advanced countries have been
pursuing various research areas for the development of
new inspection methods.
Among the various radiation sources, the X-ray has
been widely used in detecting the presence of undesir-
able objects or explosives in airport security systems be-
cause of the high intensity it provides. In spite of its
technical advantages, however, analyzing an attenuation
factor at a specic energy band is very dicult tech-
nically because of a continuous energy feature caused
by the bremsstrahlung eect. Furthermore, the conven-
tional X-ray inspection system can detect only the shapes
or forms of objects inside the baggage; it is impossible to
get information about the composition of the inside ma-

E-mail: jkkim1@hanyang.ac.kr; Fax: +82-2-2294-4800

terial because the system uses only a transmitted signal.
In order to overcome the weak points of current inspec-
tion systems, X-ray attenuation measurement and 90

scattering methods [1] with a dual energy X-ray source

have been suggested. X-ray attenuation measurements
are known to be useful for calculating the quantitative
eective attenuation coecient and the normal density.
Because 90

scattering methods can be useful in detect-

ing the material in a specic position, it is also appropri-
ate for inspecting passenger luggage mixed with various
things.
In this research, to obtain the physical properties of
objects inspected with an X-ray inspection system that
is a combination of scattering methods with dual energy
methods, we developed a source weighting method re-
ecting the characteristic of continuous energy, and we
investigated that valid through Monte Carlo N-Particle
(MCNP) [2] simulation and attenuation experiments
with a simple geometry. In this paper, the -Z related
algorithm [3] for predicting (the normal density) and
Z (the eective atomic number) from spectral attenu-
ation measurements with a continuous X-ray source is
presented. For a given spectral source S(E) and detec-
tor characteristics D(E) of the measurement, the mass
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-2710- Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 59, No. 4, October 2011
Fig. 1. Experiment schema for verifying the Z-related
algorithm.
density and the eective atomic number Z of the ab-
sorber completely determine the measured attenuation
coecient , i.e., = (, Z).
II. METHODOLOGY
1. Theoretical Calculation of Eective Atomic
Number
The relation between the eective atomic number and
the ratio of attenuation coecients for two energies was
studied, and various energy pairs are suggested, which
are 70/100 keV, 70/120 keV, etc. It is known that the
interval of two energies should be set at least 50 keV in
order to show clearly the gradient between the eective
atomic number and the ratio of attenuation coecient.
According to XCOM (Photon Cross Section Database)
[4], the mass attenuation coecient is calculated by using
the following equation, which is expressed in terms of the
photon mass attenuation in compound material.

t,comp

t,i

, (1)
where

t,comp

is the mass attenuation coecient of atom

i and is the mass ratio of atom i. R
E1/E2
which is the
attenuation coecient ratio for high energy, E
1
, and low
energy, E
2
, is expressed as
R
E1/E2
=

t
(Z
e
, E
1
)/

t
(Z
e
, E
2
)/
, (2)
where
t
(Z
e
, E
1
)/ is the mass attenuation coecient
for high energy, E
1,
and
t
(Z
e
, E
2
)/ is the mass atten-
uation coecient for low energy, E
2
.
Using Eq. (2) the tting equation that expresses the
relation between the atomic number and the attenuation
coecient is then
R
E1/E2
=
i

n=0
a
n
(Z
e
)
n
, (3)
where a
n
is the coecient of the i-th term. According to
Eq. (3), the eective atomic number can be calculated
theoretically using the mass attenuation coecients at
two dierent energies.
2. Calculation Algorithm for Eective Atomic
Number and Normal Density Using X-ray Source
In this work, the relationship between the eective
atomic number and the normal density for two X-ray
sources was studied. The simple experiment schema
adopted is shown in Fig. 1. For low energy (E
1
), the
eective attenuation coecient (
e
= ) is
1
. The
detected total response I
dn
is given by
I
d1
=

E
S(E)D(E) exp(k(E)a)dE, (4)
I
d2
=

E
S(E)D(E) exp(k(E)(a + b))dE, (5)
where S(E) is the continuous X-ray source intensity at
dE, D(E) is the detector eciency at dE, and k(E) is
the total attenuation coecient at dE.
By denition of the eective attenuation coecient,
is expressed as
= lim
b0

1
b
ln

I
d2
I
d1

= lim
b0

1
b
ln

E
S(E)D(E) exp(k(E)(a + b))dE

E
S(E)D(E) exp(k(E)a)dE

E
S(E)D(E)k(E)dE

E
S(E)D(E)dE
=

E
(E)k(E)dE, (6)
where (E) is a weighting function, dened by (E) =
S(E)D(E)

E
S(E)D(E)dE
. Then, the eective attenuation coef-
cients (
1
and
2
, for low energy and high energy) can
be calculated.
There are several methods [5] to solve the -Z related
algorithm. In this study, the algorithm was solved by
using numerical methods. In order to obtain exact re-
sults, we used Eq. (6) to calculate the spectral mass at-
tenuation coecient. The relation between the eective
Calculation of Eective Atomic Number and Normal Density Ji Sung Park and Jong Kyung Kim -2711-
Table 1. Various materials and material properties for the
simulation.
Material Composition
Eective Atomic Normal Density
Number (g/cm
3
)
TNT C
6
H
5
N
3
O
6
7.106 1.63
Acetal CH
2
O 6.950 1.40
Polyethylene C
2
H
4
5.444 0.94
Urethane C
3
H
7
NO
2
6.698 1.13
Fig. 2. Plot of numerical results for F(Z) of Eq. (5).
atomic number and the eective attenuation coecient
is then expressed as

2
=
f
1
(Z)
f
2
(Z)
= F(Z) Z = F
1

, (7)
Finally, by applying the results of Eq. (7), the density
is dened as
=

1
f
1
(Z)
=

1
f
1
[F
1
(
1
/
2
)]
. (8)
Figure 2 shows F(Z) for integer values of Z = 1
20 using
i
of Eq. (6). Since F(Z) is a monotoni-
cally increasing function of Z, the inverse function (Z =
F
1
(
1
/
2
)) can be calculated by numerical interpola-
tion. Then, the density () is calculated by using Eq. (8).
Finally, to verify the algorithm, simulation studies and
attenuation experiments were performed for simple ge-
ometries, as shown in Fig. 1.
III. MCNP SIMULATION
1. Material and Geometry
Simulation studies using ve kinds of materials were
performed to demonstrate the energy weighted -Z re-
lated algorithm. The transmitted objects, 2 cm in
Table 2. Simulated eective atomic numbers and normal
densities for various samples.
Eective Atomic Normal Density
Number (g/cm
3
)
Material Rel. Rel.
Ref. Cal. Di. Ref. Cal. Di.
(%) (%)
TNT 7.106 6.651 6.41 1.63 1.576 3.32
Acetal 6.950 6.504 6.42 1.40 1.402 0.75
Polyethylene 5.444 5.235 3.83 0.94 1.013 8.04
Urethane 6.698 6.279 6.25 1.13 1.152 1.95
Fig. 3. (Color online) X-ray spectra generated by using
Xcomp5r (IN90, IN150).
length, were located as in Fig. 1. The materials used
in this study were three kinds of polymer compounds
and an explosive material (trinitrotoluene, TNT). The
neighboring material was polyethylene. The various ob-
jects for the simulation are given in Table 1. The X-ray
spectra used in the simulation studies were obtained by
using the modied Xcomp5r code [6], which generates
various X-ray spectra. The two source spectra are shown
in Fig. 3. The low energy spectrum is called IN90 [7] and
we generated using a Tin (Sn) beam hardening lter at a
90 kVp X-ray power. The high energy spectrum is called
IN150 [7] and we generated using a Sn beam hardening
lter at a 150 kVp X-ray power. After all calculations,
the results were compared with the reference normal den-
sity and the reference eective atomic number with the
electron screening eect [8] considered. The computed
reference values are shown in Table 1.
2. Results and Discussion
The eective atomic numbers and normal densities
were calculated in the simple geometry by using Eqs. (7)
and (8). As a result, the relative dierences between
the reference value and the calculated value were within
-2712- Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 59, No. 4, October 2011
Fig. 4. (Color online) Experimental conguration for at-
tenuation measurements.
Fig. 5. (Color online) Transmitted spectra for various sam-
ples (IN90).
6.5%. The calculation results are shown in Table 2. For
example, in the case of the explosive, the computed value
has a relative dierence of less than 6.5%, as compared
with the reference data. For the normal density, the rel-
ative dierence between the reference value and the cal-
culated value was less than 8% in all cases. Therefore,
the source weighted -Z related algorithm can estimate
the eective atomic number and the normal density of a
potentially illicit material. In addition, we demonstrated
that the suggested method is more accurate than the con-
ventional inspection system, which performs with a more
than 30% false alarm rate.
IV. TRANSMISSION EXPERIMENT
1. Materials and Conguration
The suggested algorithm was veried by using an
attenuation experiment with several kinds of samples,
including a TNT simulant. Spectral data with two
measurements using dierent source spectra, IN90 and
IN150, were obtained. The eective energies of IN90
and IN150 were 79 keV and 129 keV, respectively. To
Table 3. Eective atomic numbers and normal densities
calculated from experimental measurements for various sam-
ples.
Eective Atomic Normal Density
Number (g/cm
3
)
Material Rel. Rel.
Ref. Cal. Di. Ref. Cal. Di.
(%) (%)
TNT 7.106 7.396 4.07 1.63 1.616 0.84
Acetal 6.950 7.297 4.99 1.40 1.497 7.60
Polyethylene 5.444 5.626 3.34 0.94 1.015 8.97
Urethane 6.698 7.332 9.46 1.13 1.214 7.42
measure the transmitted signal, we selected a LaBr
3
(Ce)
scintillator, which has a high detection eciency and
good energy resolution. For the shielding device to ob-
struct the background signal simultaneously, a detector
collimator was manufactured.
Four kinds of highly polymerized compounds were em-
ployed as experimental samples. One of these was a TNT
simulant, which had the same composition and material
properties as real TNT. The others were normal poly-
merized compound materials. All experimental devices
and congurations are shown in Fig. 4. The detection
time for each experiment was 5 min, and the X-ray in-
tensity was 1 mA for the IN150 and IN90 spectra.
2. Results and Discussion
Using the attenuation measurement system, the trans-
mitted signals were obtained. As the experimental re-
sults, the transmitted spectra of the various samples
were obtained. Figure 5 shows the measured spectra
for the N90 X-ray beam. To obtain net counts on mea-
sured spectra, we determined ROIs (regions of interest)
by using a previously developed ROI calculation equa-
tion [1]. After the determination of the ROI in all cases,
net counts were calculated. Then, the eective atomic
number for each illicit material was calculated by using
Eq. (7). The calculated results are shown in Table 3.
From the experimental results, the relative dierences
were found to be less than 10% for all sample sets. In
the case of the TNT experiment, the relative dierence
for the eective atomic number was 4.07%. Considering
the average error of 30% found with the conventional in-
spection system for material identications, the results
are shown to be quite accurate. For the normal den-
sity computed by using Eq. (8), the relative dierence
between the reference value and the experimental value
was within 9%.
From various experiments, we demonstrated that the
proposed -Z related algorithm could estimate the eec-
tive atomic number and the normal density as precisely
Calculation of Eective Atomic Number and Normal Density Ji Sung Park and Jong Kyung Kim -2713-
as the CT system. Furthermore, the normal density cal-
culated by using the experimental measurement is very
signicant in the X-ray inspection eld. For example, be-
cause the eective atomic numbers for TNT, acetal, and
urethane (7.3957, 7.2967, and 7.3315, respectively) are
comparatively similar, technically distinguishing these
three materials is very dicult using conventional in-
spection methods. However, it is possible to discriminate
TNT from other material, if the density information from
the above results is added.
V. CONCLUSION
The eective atomic number (Z
e
) and the normal
density () are obtained by using the source weighting
method with a dual energy X-ray inspection system, and
the source weighted methods are presented and validated
by simulation and experimental studies. For the eec-
tive atomic number and the normal density, the relative
dierences between calculated and experimental values
were less than 10% for most sample cases. Finally, we
veried that the source weighted -Z related methods
can accurately estimate the eective atomic number and
the normal density for an unknown object when the ob-
ject has been mixed with a material having a similar
eective atomic number. This method is more accurate
than other transmission methods, whose maximum false
alarm rates are usually as high as 30%. As a future
endeavor, research for combining the suggested methods
and Compton scattering methods will be performed, and
a practical application study for this method will be car-
ried out
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was performed with support from the
Ministry of Knowledge Economy (2008-P-EP-HM-E-06-
0000), the Ministry of Education, Science and Technol-
ogy (2009-0078580), and the Innovative Technology Cen-
ter for Radiation Safety.
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