Workshop On Radiographic Imaging and Applications (WORIA)

The WORIA workshop is intended to engage both research and development performers (national laboratory, industry, academia, etc.), end users and mission stakeholder funding agencies to produce an “expert consensus view” regarding future research directions for a comprehensive radiography/penetrating imaging portfolio executed by the Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development (DNN R&D) Near Field Detection Portfolio.

In the context of this workshop, the term “penetrating imaging” describes active interrogation (either photon or neutron) used in U.S. Government (DOE, DOD, DHS, etc.) applications for items that include significant areal densities of high-atomic-number materials (such as nuclear material).  Items with significant areal densities may include shielding casks, nuclear fuel, or nuclear material parts and/or components; inspections may be required for purposes of product certification, quality assurance, nuclear material accounting, criticality safety, treaty verification, or emergency response.   

WORIA is intended to be a recurring meeting to ensure continued dialog between technology users, technology developers, and program managers. The inaugural WORIA will focus on radiographic imaging applications where a portable imaging system needs to be brought to an item of interest (rather than the item brought to an imaging facility).  These applications are of particular interest because 

• many items of interest to DOE may be difficult or impossible to bring to a facility for inspection because of criticality safety, security, or regulatory requirements, 
• facilities are one-off developments for well-defined purposes whose instruments are typically developed as part of the cost of the facility, and 
• DOE applications often require solutions more distant from existing systems designed for medicine/industry and therefore require more investment to develop. 

WORIA is intended to provide a forum to liaise and share information between technology developers (in government and industry), end users, and mission stakeholders.  The goals of WORIA are to:

• Provide an overview of the current state of the art.  Research and development performers working on sources and detectors would like to identify all potential end users of their technology and as full a picture as possible of the applications their technology will address including its challenges and constraints.
• Identify emerging areas of overlap between industry and government research and development.  Over the years, the non-destructive examination community has benefitted enormously from previous developments that target (largely) medical imaging.  To date, this has not resulted in development of sources and detectors optimized for MeV x-rays or fast neutrons.  New developments, such as dose reconstruction of external beam radiation treatments or non-destructive examination of large, metal, 3D printed parts, may result in new drivers for this kind of inspection.
• Identify challenges common to multiple applications.  Some challenges, such as the need for efficient detectors for MeV radiography are not limited to a single application.  The workshop should identify some of these common themes.