A comparison of collimator geometries for imaging mixed radiation fields with fast liquid organic scintillators

As a result of recent advances in digital pulse-shape discrimination methods it has become possible to image mixed fields (radiation environments compromising both neutrons and gamma rays) relatively quickly with a single, organic liquid `fast´ scintillator within a heavy metal collimator. The use of a liquid scintillator has significant benefits over other techniques for imaging radiation environments as the acquired data can be analysed to provide separate information about the gamma and neutron emissions from a source (or sources) in a single scan. The imaging resolution achieved is fundamentally related to the detector efficiency and to the collimator geometry. In this paper the impact of using two different geometries of tungsten collimator are compared experimentally and three different materials considered in the Monte Carlo simulation, in order to determine the optimum set-up for mixed-field imaging. The measurements were performed in the low-scatter facility of the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington.