Theoretical study of angle-cut collimator based design in high-energy proton radiography

Abstract

The angle-cut collimator plays an important role in high-energy proton radiography. By using the collimator, the image contrast can be improved, and the material diagnosis and density reconstruction can be realized through secondary imaging. As all these techniques depend on the flux value, it is of great significance to reduce the error of the detected flux value. The ideal collimator is a much thin surface, but thick enough to block protons outside the collimation region. It is designed by stretching the aperture of the collimation plane. The shape is cylindrical, and it will increase the error of the flux value with the angle truncation. The initial bunch is defined and the phase diagram of the bunch within the angle-cut is ideal in the theoretical model. The equation of designing the collimator is given by theoretical analysis. It is given by the transfer matrix, the radius of the object and the angle-cut. The pore structure is oval-shaped by calculating and simulating. The proton imaging system of 1.6 GeV is established by Geant4 program, and the detector is ideal. The round copper plate and the concentric spheres are chosen as objects respectively. The parameters of the designed collimator is given by this method. The ideal collimator, tensile collimator and designed collimator are used in simulation, the radius of object is 5 cm and the angle-cut is 2 mrad and 3.5 mrad. The results show that when using the ideal and the designed angle-cut collimator, the flux distributions are in good agreement, while when using the tensile collimator, the result is quite different from that obtained by using the ideal collimator. Therefore, the collimator designed by this method can effectively reduce the error of the detected flux value.