Applied Radiation and Isotopes 85 (2014) 5459

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Applied Radiation and Isotopes

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apradiso

Application of Neutron Tomography in Culture Heritage Research

T. Mongy n
Atomic Energy Authority (AEA) of Egypt, Egypt Second Research Reactor (ETRR-2), P.O. Box 13759, Abo Zaabal, Cairo, Egypt

H I G H L I G H T S

Neutron Tomography is an efcient tool in the eld of Cultural Heritage research.

The full description of the ETRR-2 and state-of-the-art Neutron Tomography system.
Implementation of using computer software package in image reconstruction and imaging processing.
Precise measurements that was impossible by traditional methods.
The manuscript opens the door to investigate ancient Egyptian treasures.

art ic l e i nf o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 31 July 2013
Received in revised form
2 October 2013
Accepted 12 November 2013
Available online 11 December 2013

Neutron Tomography (NT) investigation of Culture Heritages (CH) is an efcient tool for understanding
the culture of ancient civilizations. Neutron imaging (NI) is a-state-of-the-art non-destructive tool in the
area of CH and plays an important role in the modern archeology. The NI technology can be widely
utilized in the eld of elemental analysis.
At Egypt Second Research Reactor (ETRR-2), a collimated Neutron Radiography (NR) beam is
employed for neutron imaging purposes. A digital CCD camera is utilized for recording the beam
attenuation in the sample. This helps for the detection of hidden objects and characterization of material
properties. Research activity can be extended to use computer software for quantitative neutron
measurement. Development of image processing algorithms can be used to obtain high quality images.
In this work, full description of ETRR-2 was introduced with up to date neutron imaging system as
well. Tomographic investigation of a clay forged artifact represents CH object was studied by neutron
imaging methods in order to obtain some hidden information and highlight some attractive quantitative
measurements. Computer software was used for imaging processing and enhancement. Also the Astra
Image 3.0 Pro software was employed for high precise measurements and imaging enhancement using
advanced algorithms.
This work increased the effective utilization of the ETRR-2 Neutron Radiography/Tomography (NR/T)
technique in Culture Heritages activities.
& 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Neutron imaging
Neutron Tomography
Neutron Radiography
Culture Heritage

1. Introduction
ERRR-2 Neutron Radiography (NR) facility was commissioned
in 1999. The rst experiments carried out were determination of
characterization parameters, such as, ux map, n/ ratio, Cd ratio
and spatial resolution. The results were compared with MCNP
calculations. Internal details were detected for different samples
using a nitrocellulose lm. The photographic lm was replaced
by a nitrocellulose lm to get high quality image formation. A lot
of experiments were performed toward scientic research and
quality assurance as well. Welding inspection, measuring water

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E-mail address: tmongy@gmail.com

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apradiso.2013.11.028

permeability in building materials and imaging enhancement

by scattered neutron deblurring were the major experiments
achieved in the past.
Fast Neutron Resonance Radiography (FNRR) was also introduced using a portable neutron source. The characterization parameters were determined for the neutron source. Detection of
hydrogenous components was implemented to study water permeability in building materials using quantitative FNRR (Mongy and
Gaheen, 2011). Capabilities of underground water migration in
soil were also investigated and implemented to preserve Cultural
Heritage monuments.
The gamma ray radiography (R) technique was used to inspect
welding materials. The NR technique was compared with R
in 2011. Dynamic System Neutron Radiography (DSNR) was precommissioned using a DELCam camera. High denitions, high

T. Mongy / Applied Radiation and Isotopes 85 (2014) 5459

resolution and high quality images were obtained using the imaging
processing technique.

2. Description of ETRR-2
ETRR-2 is an open pool-type research reactor with variable core
arrangement (Esposto, 1999). The core power is 22 MWth cooled
by light water, moderated by water and with beryllium reectors.
The design concept is based on versatile utilizations. It has been
mainly designed for:
1. basic and applied research in reactor physics and nuclear
engineering,
2. Neutron Radiography for research and industrial purpose,
3. radioisotope production for medical and industrial purposes,
4. beam holes experimentation for neutron scattering experiments and Neutron Radiography,
5. material testing,
6. material irradiation,
7. activation analysis, and
8. training of scientic and technical personnel.

55

control rods, chimney, core cooling system pipe, pool

cooling system diffuser, fuel elements, reectors, irradiation grid, irradiation chamber shield, suction box, radial
tube and Underwater Neutron Radiography (UWNR) tube.

3. State of the art neutron imaging facility at ETRR-2

The commissioning of the state of the art new neutron imaging
(NI) system started at the end of March 2012 under the framework
of TC communication between AEA and IAEA. The layout of the
system is shown in Fig. 2. The NI system was installed to replace
static based lm neutron radiography.
For NI, the neutrons are attenuated and a sufcient amount of
light is produced by a scintillation screen that detected with a CCD
camera. The scintillation screen used had a composition of LiF:ZnS:
Cu (Bennett et al., 2001). The neutrons interact with lithium due
its large cross section to produce an alpha particle (4He ) and
tritium (3H) daughter products. The energy from alpha particle is
deposited into zinc sulde (ZnS) and efcient phosphor producing

ETRR-2 has four neutron beams and a thermal column as the

main experimental devices allow neutron sources outside the
reactor core. The four neutron beams tubes are:
1.
2.
3.
4.

the
the
the
the

Neutron Radiography Facility,

Radial Beam Tube,
Tangential Beam Tube, and
Underwater Neutron Radiography Facility.

Fig. 1 represents the reactor tank with its internals. The gure
shows: passing mechanism, pool cooling pipe, thermal
column, beryllium block, tangential tube, guide box,

Fig. 2. Layout for neutron radioscopy system with a scintillation screen and cooled
CCD camera as used in ETRR-2.

Table 1
Equipment used for NT in ETRR-2 with specications.

Fig. 1. ETRR-2 tank with its internals.

Equipment

Technical specications

PCO2000 CCD thermo-electrical cooling camera

system compact with power supply

High resolution (2048

 2048 pixel)
14 bit dynamic range
Image rate of 14.7 fps @
full resolution
Low noise
Low dark current
Pixel size (hor.  ver.) is
7.4  7.4 m2
4 GB camera memory

Lenses
Mirror

Nikon, 50 mm focal
length
451
High reectivity polished
silicon

Scintillator
Light tight box

6LiF ZnS
Aluminum

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T. Mongy / Applied Radiation and Isotopes 85 (2014) 5459

visible light. The copper element acts as a wavelength shifter to

produce light in the yellowgreen region, which has an average
wavelength of 525 nm.
The use of CCD camera system has an advantage of tomography
experiments possibility. The CCD camera with its lenses, mirror
and integrated cooling unit is housed in a shielded light tight
aluminum box. Table 1 summarizes the CCD camera system with
technical specications.
Camware program was employed for camera control and image
acquisition. Image acquisition and image processing was accomplished by using ImageJ. The VGStudioMAX software from Volume
Graphics was used for data processing, visualization and animation of image capturing. For image reconstruction, the Octopus
software was also applied.
Table 2 summarizes the used software for data reconstruction
with specic technical functions.

Fig. 3. Scheme diagram of neutron radiography beam tube.

4. Application of NT in Culture Heritage research

The experiment was carried out at ETRR-2 Neutron Radiography/Tomography Facility (NR/TF). The facility characterization
parameters are summarized in Table 3 (Abou Mandour et al.,
2007).
Fig. 3 illustrates the scheme diagram of Neutron Radiography
beam tube showing collimator inlet aperture (D) and source to
object distance (L).
A simulated forged pottery Peruvian artifact, shown in Fig. 4,
provided by IAEA was scanned to enhance reconstructed image
Table 2
Software for data reconstruction with specic functions.
Software
Camware

Functions
Camera control
Image acquisition and archiving in various le format

ImageJ

Display, edit, analyze, process, save, print 8 bit

color and gray scale
Read image with different image formatting

LabVIEW

Date acquisition
Motion control

Octopus

Image processing
Image reconstruction
Image analysis
Single slice evaluation
Tuning reconstruction parameters without
processing the complete volume
3D viewer
Read image with different image formatting

VGStudioMax

3D image processing and animation

Volumetric data analysis and measurement
High quality inner structure visualization
Volume element characterization

Table 3
Characterization parameters of ETRR-2 NR/TF.
Parameters

Characterizations

Inlet aperture (D) of the collimator

Outlet aperture of the collimator
(beam opening at sample position)
Source to object distance (L)
L/D (resolution parameter)
Thermal ux at sample position (nth)
(nth/) Ratio
Cd ratioa

3 cm
22 cm

Ratio between total and fast uxes.

351.8 cm
117.3
1.5  107 neutrons/cm2 s
105 n cm  2 mR  1
10

Fig. 4. The Peruvian forged pottery artifact on its scanning position at the beam
opening. The artifact has 26 cm height, 12 cm width and 9 cm side.

formation resulting from the Octopus reconstruction software. For

a three dimensional tomographic reconstruction, transmission
images of the artifact were taken from different view angles
(1.21 per projection). A rotational table, driven by a stepper motor
connected to a computerized motion control system, was installed
at the sample position. The number of projections to full scan the
artifact with 3601 was 300. To synchronize the Camware software
(CCD camera software) and the rotational table, a new software
based on Copley Controls macro-language was designed and used.
Reasonable exposure time was adjusted at 10 s per projection
with 10 MW reactor power operation, it means that about 1 h was
sufcient to full scan the object including image processing
correction (dark current and at eld correction).
Dark current images are offset images taken at the same
irradiation time (10 s) averaged over 10 images, in this experiment. Flat eld images are open beam images taken at the same
irradiation time (10 s) averaged over 10 images.
To correct recorded beam intensity inhomogeneities, image
normalization was calculated by the Octopus software; according
to Eq. (1),
Normalized image
Tomography image  Average dark current images

Flat field image  Average dark current images

For dark and at eld (open beam) images, the correction was
done by applying a median lter over 10 images by the Octopus
software. For each pixel the median pixel value (within the 10
values of the 10 images) was taken to obtain the resulting dark
current and at eld (open beam) images.
As chargeless particles, neutrons can deeply penetrate objects
and non-destructively provide information about the inner structure and composition of materials. The resultant 3D images
reconstructions of the artifact after applying imaging processing
enhancement by the Octopus are shown in Fig. 5.
For imaging enhancement resulting from Octopus, Astra Image
3.0 Pro was used. Astra is image processing software used for
deblurring, sharpening and analyzing the 3D image formation.
To extract features from the scanned article, Astra Image Pro
was used for implementing the Point Spread Function (PSF),

T. Mongy / Applied Radiation and Isotopes 85 (2014) 5459

57

Fig. 5. Image reconstruction and enhancement using the Octopus software.

Fig. 7. Comparison of enhanced image reconstruction by the Octopus (left) and the
imaging enhancement technique by the Astra Image Pro (right).

Fig. 6. Imaging enhancement using the Astra Image Pro.

Cauchy type, with 2.0 PSF size and 20 iterations, high quality
results were provided. Fig. 6 shows 3D image reconstruction and
enhancement by the Octopus software (left). Right one represents
imaging enhancement of the article by the Maximum Entropy
Dconvolution tool in the Astra Image Pro.
From the gure, we obtained enhanced, sharp and high quality
image by the Astra Image Pro. A lot of protrusions have appeared,
i.e., the article is full of unlimited protrusions.
The Astra Image 3.0 Pro is a powerful software to calculate line
prole and image statistics. The scanned line prole (AA), in Fig. 7,
was plotted for the 3D image formation resulting from the Octopus
reconstruction software. The enhancement was carried out by the
formerly mentioned tool using the Astra Image Pro (right image in
Fig. 7). The line prole is shown in Fig. 8.
The Astra Image Pro has the function of calculating image
statistics, such as the minimum (minimum pixel value in the
image) and maximum (maximum pixel value in the image), the
mean (the mean of all pixels in the image) and the standard
deviation (Std. Dev.). From the denition, the standard deviation of
all pixels in the image measures how much variation or dispersion
is from the mean. A low standard deviation indicates that the data
points tend to be very close to the mean, and hence high quality
image formation is obtained with noise suppression (Young et al.,
2007), on the other hand, high standard deviation indicates that
the data points are spread out over a large range of values, and
hence weak image formation is obtained with the presence
of noise.
The Std. Dev. of the red (R), green (G) and blue (B) colors are
tabulated in Table 4. There is no image degradation from Std. Dev.
view point.

Fig. 8. Line prole of the scanned line AA of Fig. 7 (the conversion factor is
0.28 mm/pixel).

Table 4
Std. Dev. of enhanced image reconstruction by the Octopus and Astra Image Pro.
Software

Color

Std. Dev.

Octopus

R
G
B

39.330
59.090
72.877

Astra Image Pro

R
G
B

39.330
59.090
72.877

From Fig. 7, the article side measured value (9 cm) represents

by pixel number from 125 to 450, i.e., each pixel represents
0.28 mm. Table 5 represents actual, experimental values and
percentage of error for different dimensions of article side view
which are shown in Fig. 9.
3D surface plot was created by the software to nd out some
detail hidden information. To measure the depth of the two porosities
1 and 2 of the enhanced image formation of the article, the rectangular
selection tool is used to draw surface plot of the selected surface. The
surface plot gray level ranges from 64.67 to 255, this gray level prole
represents 0.5 cm depth (measured value). Thus the conversion factor

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T. Mongy / Applied Radiation and Isotopes 85 (2014) 5459

Table 5
Actual, experimental values and percentage of error for side view locations of Fig. 8.
Location

Actual values (cm)

Experimental values (cm)

Percentage of error (%)

Line 1
Line 2
Line 3
Porosity (1)
Porosity (2)
Grit (1)

4.00
7.00
8.00
Not measured (NM)
NM
NM

Grit (2)

NM

4.10
6.92
8.10
0.266
0.212
0.12 (Height)
0.028 (Radius)
0.86 (Height)
0.084 (Radius)

 2.50 (Calculated)
1.40 (Calculated)
 1.25 (Calculated)
7 1.95 (Assuming max.
7 1.95 (Assuming max.
NM
7 1.95 (Assuming max.
NM
7 1.95 (Assuming max.

Fig. 10. 3D surface plot of the rectangular selected surface.

Fig. 9. Different locations of actual and experimental values of article side view.

is 0.002 cm/gray level. Fig. 10 shows the selected rectangular surface to

obtain 3D surface plot.
The distinction of NT for the detection of the presence of air
voids inside the material (porosities) is pronounced, as clearly
shown in Fig. 9. Surface plots tool was employed for the two
porosities 1 and 2 to investigate the porosities shapes. Fig. 11
shows the 3D surface plot of porosities 1 (upper) and 2 (down).
Referring to porosity 1, the deepest depth was found to be
2.66 mm and for porosity 2 it is 2.12 mm.
From Fig. 11, valuable notications must be mentioned. First,
porosity 1 is not a normal void; it has a prominence of height
0.665 mm. Second, porosity 2 is differing from porosity 1 and it
has an egg-shaped with concave depth.
The same tool was used to explore features of grits 1 and 2 of
Fig. 9. The surface plots were drawn showing 1.2 mm and 0.86 mm
heights for the grits 1 and 2 respectively. Also, the line proles were
drawn to nd out grits radius (the conversion factor is 0.28 mm/
pixel), it was found to be 0.28 and 0.84 mm correspondingly.
For high quality 3D animation and visualization, the VGStudioMax software was used for the creation of impressive animation
of the article from volumetric data set imported from the Octopus
software. Videos from the slice image stacks are created providing
another possibility to easily display and share analysis results.
Fig. 12 shows the VGStudioMax providing high accuracy determination features on the basis of voxels data set from Octopus
software.
The functionality of the VGStudioMAX for volumetric data
analysis and animation was implemented. For back void investigation, the 3D surface plot tool was used again to explore the
void shape of the selected area in Fig. 12. The intensity of each

Fig. 11. 3D surface plot of porosities 1 (upper) and 2 (down).

error)
error)
error)
error)

T. Mongy / Applied Radiation and Isotopes 85 (2014) 5459

59

Fig. 12. Back void surface plots of the article.

pixel determines its height in three-dimensional space. Fig. 12

shows the 3D surface plots. The void extends through the article
thickness.
5. Conclusions
Neutron Tomography (NT) has been developed as a mature
scientic method in ETRR-2. Non-destructive investigation of
Culture Heritages (CH) is important for understanding the culture
of ancient civilizations. Neutron Tomography (NT) is a-state-ofthe-art non-destructive tool in the area of CH, and plays an
important role in the modern archeology.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to express his deep thanks to Nikolay
Kardjilov, Helmholz Institute, Germany, for his assistance and

advices. Also, a great thanks from the depths of the heart to

D. Ridikas, IAEA, for facilitating all difculties in nancial supports.

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