The CARTOGAM portable gamma imaging system

Abstract

The CARTOGAM portable gamma camera has been developed for gamma imaging applications in nuclear facilities. Its most remarkable characteristics are its mass (15 kg for the detection head, including the shield) and its size (8 cm in diameter and 40 cm in length), which make it very easy to handle. Another specificity of this camera lies in the fact that the same detector is used for both visible and gamma images, which warrants a precise correspondence between both images. The industrialisation of CARTOGAM has been performed by the firm Eurisys Mesures, and the camera is now commercially available. We present here the technical characteristics and the performance of this device. Images obtained during acquisition campaigns on various nuclear sites are reported. Finally we address some additional developments that improve the camera performance and the exploitation of the images, such as image segmentation, estimate of dose rates, as well as the use of the detector in a photon counting mode.