JAXA Creates Camera That Can See Radiation

New submitter Ben_R_R writes "The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has created a camera that can 'see' radioactive contamination by detecting gamma rays emitted by radioactive cesium and other substances. The camera has been tested in the disaster evacuation zone around Fukushima. The image captures levels of radiation in six different colors and overlays the result over an image captured with a wide angle lens."

Where is the data?

[Anonymous Coward]

So where is the data on how accurate it actually is? How does it work???

For example, this is informative.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/exhibit/glast_exhibit.html [nasa.gov]

TFA about this device is useless.

Re:Not a surprise

[Mindcontrolled]

Usually, you just put a scintillating crystal, e.g. thallium-doped sodium iodide, in front of your detector. Gamma photon hits crystal, crystal emits photon in the visual range, photomultiplier detects visual photon. TFA is somewhat silent on how this differs from your run of the mill gamma camera which has been known for half a century by now.

Re:Where is the data?

[Michael Woodhams]

I was wondering the same.

Detecting gamma rays is pretty easy. Detecting within a few degrees which direction they came from is much harder. Lenses and mirrors won't work (at least, at any reasonable scale) to form an image. You could have two layers of detector, and measure the location of the gamma ray as it passes through both. You could look for Compton scattered electrons from the gamma ray, which would be easier to determine the direction of, but I don't think that would fit in something camera sized.

I'm also curious to know what exposure time the gamma ray camera needs - I'm guessing it will be pretty long - minutes, at least, maybe hours.