Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Nguyen, Khoa, Wohlberg, Brendt, Korobkin, Oleg, Klasky, Marc
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.27036
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914429081223168
author Nguyen, Khoa
Wohlberg, Brendt
Korobkin, Oleg
Klasky, Marc
author_facet Nguyen, Khoa
Wohlberg, Brendt
Korobkin, Oleg
Klasky, Marc
contents We investigate multi-modal material identification for special nuclear material (SNM) configurations using a combination of X-ray radiography, high-resolution γ-ray spectroscopy, and neutron multiplicity measurements. We consider a Beryllium Reflected Plutonium sphere (BeRP) ball surrounded by one or two concentric shielding shells of unknown composition whose radii are assumed known from radiography. High-purity germanium (HPGe) spectra are reduced to net counts in selected Pu-239 photo-peaks, while neutron multiplicity information is summarized by Feynman variances Y2 and Y3 computed from factorial moments of the neutron counting statistics. Using synthetic data generated with the Gamma Detector Response and Analysis Software (GADRAS) for a range of shielding materials and thicknesses, we cast the material identification problem as a supervised multi-class classification task over all admissible shell-material combinations. We demonstrate that a random forest classifier trained on combined gamma and neutron features achieves almost perfect identification accuracy for single-shell cases, and substantial performance gains for more challenging double-shell configurations relative to gamma-only classification. Alternative statistical and machine-learning formulations for this multi-class problem are examined along with examination of the impact of model-mismatch between the forward model and the test cases as given by variations in the statistical noise. Opportunities for extending the approach to more complex geometries and experimental data are also discussed.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_27036
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Material Identification using Multi-Modal Intrinsic Radiation and Radiography
Nguyen, Khoa
Wohlberg, Brendt
Korobkin, Oleg
Klasky, Marc
Instrumentation and Detectors
Machine Learning
We investigate multi-modal material identification for special nuclear material (SNM) configurations using a combination of X-ray radiography, high-resolution γ-ray spectroscopy, and neutron multiplicity measurements. We consider a Beryllium Reflected Plutonium sphere (BeRP) ball surrounded by one or two concentric shielding shells of unknown composition whose radii are assumed known from radiography. High-purity germanium (HPGe) spectra are reduced to net counts in selected Pu-239 photo-peaks, while neutron multiplicity information is summarized by Feynman variances Y2 and Y3 computed from factorial moments of the neutron counting statistics. Using synthetic data generated with the Gamma Detector Response and Analysis Software (GADRAS) for a range of shielding materials and thicknesses, we cast the material identification problem as a supervised multi-class classification task over all admissible shell-material combinations. We demonstrate that a random forest classifier trained on combined gamma and neutron features achieves almost perfect identification accuracy for single-shell cases, and substantial performance gains for more challenging double-shell configurations relative to gamma-only classification. Alternative statistical and machine-learning formulations for this multi-class problem are examined along with examination of the impact of model-mismatch between the forward model and the test cases as given by variations in the statistical noise. Opportunities for extending the approach to more complex geometries and experimental data are also discussed.
title Material Identification using Multi-Modal Intrinsic Radiation and Radiography
topic Instrumentation and Detectors
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.27036