An Application of CNNs to Time Sequenced One Dimensional Data in Radiation Detection

Abstract: A Convolutional Neural Network architecture was used to classify various isotopes of time-sequenced gamma-ray spectra, a typical output of a radiation detection system of a type commonly fielded for security or environmental measurement purposes. A two-dimensional surface (waterfall plot) in time-energy space is interpreted as a monochromatic image and standard image-based CNN techniques are applied. This allows for the time-sequenced aspects of features in the data to be discovered by the network, as opposed to standard algorithms which arbitrarily time bin the data to satisfy the intuition of a human spectroscopist. The CNN architecture and results are presented along with a comparison to conventional techniques. The results of this novel application of image processing techniques to radiation data will be presented along with a comparison to more conventional adaptive methods.