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Talks and Poster Presentations (with Proceedings-Entry):

T. Auzinger, R. Habel, A. Musilek, D. Hainz, M. Wimmer:
"GeigerCam: Measuring Radioactivity with Webcams";
Poster: ACM Siggraph, Los Angeles; 2012-08-05 - 2012-08-09; in: "Acm Siggraph 2012", (2012), 1 pages.



English abstract:
Measuring radioactivity is almost exclusively a professional task in the realms of science, industry and defense, but recent events spur the interest in low-cost consumer detection devices. We show that by using image processing techniques, a current, only slightly modified, off-the-shelf HD webcam can be used to measure alpha, beta as well as gamma radiation. In contrast to dedicated measurement devices such as Geiger counters, our framework can classify the type of radiation and can differentiate between various kinds of radioactive materials.

By optically insulating the camera's imaging sensor, recordings at extreme exposure and gain values are possible, and the partly very faint signals detectable. The camera is set to the longest exposure time possible and to a very high gain to detect even faint signals. During measurements, GPU assisted real-time image processing of the direct video feed is used to treat the remaining noise by tracking the noise spectrum per pixel, incorporating not only spatial but also temporal variations due to temperature changes and spontaneous emissions. A confidence value per pixel based on event probabilities is calculated to identify potentially hit pixels. Finally, we use morphological clustering to group pixels into particle impact events and analyze their energies.

Our approach results in a simple device that can be operated on any computer and costs only $20-30, an order of magnitude cheaper than entry-level nuclear radiation detectors.

Keywords:
radioactivity, webcam, measurement


Electronic version of the publication:
http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/PubDat_211993.pdf


Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.