Determining the chemical composition of an inhomogeneous body by multi-energy radiography

Under consideration is the problem of determining the chemical composition of an inhomogeneous body consisting of several homogeneous parts by the method of multi-energy radiography. The internal structure of the body is assumed known. At the first stage of the solution, screening of the body is carried by the collimated beam of X-rays along some specially chosen collection of straight lines at a given set of energies; and, by solving a system of linear algebraic equations, the values of the attenuation coefficients are obtained in each homogeneous part of the body. Under some additional assumptions, the possible chemical composition of these parts is found. The analysis is conducted of the influence of measurement errors on the quality of the so-obtained solution. The results are illustrated by some examples of calculations. The proposed method can be used in nondestructive control, customs control, and medicine. © 2011 Pleiades Publishing, Ltd.