As part of future arms control treaties, high-fidelity measurement techniques may be necessary to provide confidence that an item under interrogation is consistent with a declaration. Treaties may require determination of warhead type, requiring more invasive interrogation than what has been used in previous treaties. Active imaging, such as X-ray or neutron radiography, can provide such fidelity, though it has not been used historically due to the potential for release of sensitive information. Previous work has considered how to utilize the high-information content of radiography while actively protecting information. One such method is zero-knowledge protocol (ZKP) imaging, which protects information by preloading the imaging detector with the complement of the object being interrogated. Here, a method is presented to actively protect information for the radiographic interrogation of an arms control item. As a step beyond previous implementations that relied on pre-loaded detectors, information is protected here through use of a physical mask directly applied to the imager scintillation screen. This work presents new results on the feasibility of such a ZKP system using a lab-based implementation of the concept, relying on a straightforward masking scheme applied to the scintillator. The image data emitted from the scintillator screen is protected in real time, and the capability of the simple system to remove spatial information from the image will be tested. Furthermore, we present updates and improvements to the system that will enable zero-knowledge imaging of larger, and more complex, treaty accountable items.
Year
2024
Abstract