GeigerCam - Radioactivity Measurements with Webcams
PR, BA
Description
Radioactivity measurements usually belong to the realm of professional applications or natural sciences. In an attempt to make sensors cheap enough for the mass consumer market we have developed a prototype sensor on the basis of an off-the-shelf HD webcam.
In a second step we want to evaluate the capabilities of this new sensor, i.e. we want to determine which radioactive substances are detectable and how reliable these measurements are. This would require to conduct a batch of measurements with different sensors, samples and settings. An anlysis of the results shoudl lead up to the development of a calibration algorithm and a real-time measurement software.
Tasks
The main tasks are
- Perform various measurments of diverse radioactive materials to record the performance of the sensor.
- Analyse the extensive measurement data to determine noise behaviour of the sensors and their detection performance.
- Write a calibration software that adapts the previous finding to a new sensor.
- Write an image processing software to reliably measure radioactivity in real-time using GPGPU (General Purpose Processing on the Graphics Processing Unit).
The measurements are carried out at the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics. It houses a full fledged working nuclear reactor here in Vienna. There are already established connections to the local personnel for nuclear safety and they will guide you through the necessary measurement steps.
Apart from getting knowledglable in an intersting field of Physics one can also handle materials like Uranium and Plutonium on a daily basis :).
Requirements
- Basic knowledge of MATLAB.
- Basic knowledge of the GPU computing model.
- Motivation to learn a bit of nuclear physics (supervisor studied Physics).
- Ability for precise experimental work (as the measurement task can be repetitive in the end phase of the first step).
Literature
- Our prototype: project page
- Primer on radioactivity: ionizing radiation
Contact
Email: thomas.auzinger@cg.tuwien.ac.at
Homepage: Thomas Auzinger
Phone: +43 1 58801-18683
