Patent ID: 7551718

Claim:
A method for characterizing an object on the basis of mean-free-path of penetrating radiation, the method comprising: generating an incident beam of penetrating radiation, the incident beam characterized by a propagation direction and an energy distribution; disposing a plurality of detector elements about the beam of penetrating radiation, each detector element characterized by a field of view; collimating the field of view of each detector element; detecting radiation scattered from a plurality of voxels lying within the inspected object, each voxel being defined as the intersection of the field of view of one of the detector elements and the propagation direction of the incident beam of penetrating radiation; calculating attenuation of scattered penetrating radiation between pairs of voxels, each voxel of the pair corresponding to one of at least two propagation directions of the incident beam of penetrating radiation; and characterizing the object on the basis of the calculation and the mean-free-path of penetrating radiation.