A Particle System Approach to Industrial Tomographic Reconstruction

Geovane Vasconcelos1, Sílvio Melo2, Carlos Dantas1, Ícaro Malta2, Renato Oliveira2 and Eric Oliveira1.

1Departamento de Energia Nuclear – Universidade Federal de Pernambuco – Brazil

2Centro de Informática – Universidade Federal de Pernambuco – Brazil

ABSTRACT

This work introduces a new approach to the reconstruction of a catalyst density distribution inside a riser, using a relatively low number of projections, suitable for industrial applications. The Particle System approach considers each natural pixel that represents the catalyst in the image as a particle with certain physical features, subject to a group of forces, which can produce movement. The system constantly updates the net of particles by repositioning them in such a way to approach the equilibrium. The elastic potential along a trajectory (which corresponds to a gamma ray beam) is a function of the difference between the attenuation coefficient in the current configuration, and the corresponding experimental readings. A sequence of configurations of particles shows a similarity to the real physical situation. In this work, we present a simple analysis of the resulting reconstruction under the point of view of both quality and performance, and some comparisons with an algebraic method are conducted.

Keywords Particle System, Iterative Reconstruction Method, Gamma Tomography