Patent ID: 8217362

Claim:
A radioisotope identification device comprising: a gamma-ray detector having three dimensional vertex localization; said gamma-ray detector producing a first three dimensional vertex localization and a second three dimensional vertex localization corresponding to two interaction locations resulting from one incident gamma-ray event; said gamma-ray detector having a first deposited energy output for each said gamma-ray event; wherein said gamma-ray detector is configured to produce an event datum containing said first deposited energy output, said first three dimensional vertex localization and said second three dimensional vertex localization for each gamma-ray event; a computer-readable storage media, wherein a data set of emission gamma-ray energies characteristic of suspect radioisotopes is stored on said computer-readable storage media; a system controller comprising a processor wherein said system controller is communicatively coupled to said gamma-ray detector; a computational processor communicatively coupled to said computer-readable storage media; a computational model of said gamma-ray detector; wherein said computational processor is configured to select a first event datum; wherein said computational processor is configured to select a first hypothetical radioisotope and first hypothetical radioisotope location; wherein said computational processor is configured to calculate the likelihood that said first hypothetical radioisotope and said first hypothetical radioisotope location accounts said first event datum using said computational model of said gamma-ray detector; wherein said computational processor is configured to select a second hypothetical radioisotope location; wherein said computational processor is configured to calculate the likelihood that said first hypothetical radioisotope and said second hypothetical radioisotope location accounts for said first event datum using said computational model of said gamma-ray detector; and an output from said computational processor indicating the most likely source location.