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Lens design challenges for

scintillator-based neutron imaging

V. Geppert-Kleinrath, L. Tafoya, C. Danly, V. Fatherley,

E. Mendoza, et al.

V. Geppert-Kleinrath, L. Tafoya, C. Danly, V. Fatherley, E. Mendoza, J.

Vaughan, C. Wilde, P. Volegov, "Lens design challenges for scintillator-based
neutron imaging," Proc. SPIE 10763, Radiation Detectors in Medicine,
Industry, and National Security XIX, 107630P (11 September 2018); doi:
10.1117/12.2322920

Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2018, San Diego, California,

United States

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 Invited Paper

Lens design challenges for scintillator-based neutron imaging

V. Geppert-Kleinrath, L. Tafoya, C. Danly, V. Fatherley, E. Mendoza, J. Vaughan, C. Wilde
and P. Volegov
Los Alamos National Laboratory, PO Box 1663, Los Alamos, NM, USA 87545
ABSTRACT
Neutron imaging is a powerful diagnostic to study inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions at the National
Ignition Facility (NIF) using neutrons emitted in the fusion reactions. Analysis of time-gated images of the
primary fusion (14.1 MeV) and down-scattered (6-12 MeV) neutrons based on their time-of-flight allows for
the reconstruction of the burning hot spot undergoing fusion and the surrounding cold fuel. The Los Alamos
National Laboratory (LANL) Advanced Imaging team has been providing these images since 2011. Now, two
additional lines of sight are being designed and built for NIF to allow three-dimensional reconstructions. Neutron
imaging relies on the conversion of neutrons into light to be captured by an imaging system through the use
of a scintillator. While the current neutron imaging system utilizes a fiber scintillator array, a newly designed
imaging system will consist of a thick monolithic scintillator and custom-designed lenses to collect the light. The
custom lens has to resolve an image produced in the thick volume of the scintillator and therefore needs a large
depth of field .
Keywords: inertial confinement fusion, nuclear diagnostics, neutron imaging, neutron time-of-flight, lens design,
scintillator

1. INTRODUCTION
The LANL Advanced Imaging team has been providing neutron imaging diagnostics of ICF implosion experiments
at NIF since 2011. Images taken using neutrons emitted by the fusion reactions are critical to analysis of the
fuel performance, specifically of ignition-limiting asymmetries. The fusion reaction of a Deuterium and Tritium
nucleus gives off a free neutron during the formation of Helium-4. While each fusion neutron is initially at
14.1 MeV, some neutrons collide with surrounding unignited cold fuel, where they deposit some of their energy
in scattering reactions. By choosing to image neutrons at specific energies by utilizing a time-of-flight technique,
the resulting image depicts either the central hot spot (13-17 MeV time gate) or the surrounding cold fuel (6-
12 MeV time gate). The existing neutron imaging system1 at NIF consists of a pinhole array, and a pixelated
plastic fiber scintillator array placed at 28 m from the fusion source, which is viewed by two cameras that are
fast-gated using micro-channel plates (MCP) for two different neutron energies, the 14.1 MeV fusion neutrons
and slower neutrons that are down-scattered in cold fuel. Figure 1 shows a sketch of the components of the
current imaging system, the pinhole aperture array2 guides the neutrons towards the fiber scintillator array, the
scintillator is viewed by two different gated imaging systems to produce primary and down-scattered images -
one is lens-coupled, one is fiber-coupled.
The Advanced Imaging team is in the process of designing two new neutron imaging systems for an additional
equatorial line of sight and one polar line of sight at NIF. The team has shown that additional imaging systems
along roughly perpendicular lines of sight will provide crucial information to reconstruct three-dimensional fuel
shape and density.3, 4 Gamma imaging capabilities will be added to provide information on the remaining ablator
of fuel capsules during stagnation by imaging (n,γ) reactions in the shell. The new systems will be all lens-coupled
rather than fiber-coupled to reduce scattering mass in the neutron beam, and will employ thick monolithic
scintillators. In order to select the most optimal scintillator material, multiple comprehensive campaigns of
neutron radiography characterization measurements have been carried out at the Los Alamos Neutron Science
Center (LANSCE) Weapons Neutron Research facility as well as at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics OMEGA
laser facility (a manuscript describing the extensive design study is in preparation). The experiments using over
20 advanced scintillator materials and different lens options showed that a thick monolithic scintillator would
exhibit the best spatial resolution, highest light output, and favorable signal-to-noise characteristics.

Radiation Detectors in Medicine, Industry, and National Security XIX, edited by Gary P. Grim,
Lars R. Furenlid, H. Bradford Barber, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 10763, 107630P · © 2018 SPIE
CCC code: 0277-786X/18/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.2322920

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 10763 107630P-1

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 o
10
6 -12 MeV
14 MeV
Hot Spot

Cold Fuel

Figure 1. A sketch depicting the neutron imaging system currently in use at NIF, installed in 2011.

The use of a thick monolithic scintillator presents certain challenges to producing high quality images. A
scintillator creates visible light for the camera to capture when a neutron collides with a nucleus of the scintillator
material (a hydrogen nucleus in a standard plastic scintillator), creating a recoil proton that emits visible light
along its entire flight path through the scintillator (approximately 1 mm). Each interaction between a neutron
and a target nucleus inside the scintillator can occur outside of the focal plane of the lens given the scintillator
thickness, and produce the recoil proton at an angle to the imaging system, and therefore contribute blur. A
thorough understanding of the blur that will be contributed to the system by the scintillator properties is critical
to the lens design. The method employed to obtain the complete system blur was to construct a prototype
imaging system consisting of a monolithic scintillator and a commercial test lens, so that the scintillator blur can
be deconvolved and the photometrics analyzed. The prototype shown in figure 2 consists of a 2 cm thick Eljen
Technologies EJ262 plastic scintillator coupled to a Photek MCP and Spectral Instruments SI-800 camera using
a commercial Canon lens (variable f# from 1.8 to 11). The prototype was fielded at OMEGA and LANSCE5, 6
using neutrons to image radiographic test objects, namely a rolled tungsten edge and a copper step wedge, to
measure scintillator light output, system resolution, and noise properties.

2. LENS RESOLUTION
In order to study the resolution of the planned lens-coupled monolithic scintillator system and isolate the prop-
erties of the test lens from the scintillator contribution, a thorough understanding of certain optical principles is
required. First, the resolution of an optical system changes as a function of the distance from the focal plane.7
Given that rays of light from the source plane converge through the lens onto the image plane, as the distance
changes from the point of focus, the rays will converge either before the image plane and overlap, or reach the
image plane before they are completely focused. Since the light is focused from a point on the source plane
through a circular aperture, the resulting imperfect convergence that occurs outside the focal plane is circular,
and its diameter varies as a function of the distance of the point in the source plane. This is known as the circle
of confusion.8 While the circle of confusion, varies in size based on the distance of the point in the source plane
- proportional to the square of magnification, the rate at which it changes also varies based on the size of the
aperture. Smaller aperture sizes reduce the lens diameter and cause it to converge fewer marginal rays, reducing
the rate at which the circle of confusion changes. Decreasing the rate at which the circle of confusion grows
is increasing the depth of field of the lens, meaning points over a greater object distance can be focused.8 A
thorough understanding of how the blur (circle of confusion) changes as the distance from the focal plane changes
is required for the design of the new system. While a greater depth of field would be optimal for imaging the

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 Figure 2. The prototype setup at LANSCE. Radiographic test objects (left: tungsten rolled edge, right: copper step
wedge) were imaged using a 2 cm thick Eljen Technologies EJ262 plastic scintillator coupled to a Photek MCP and Spectral
Instruments SI-800 camera using a commercial Canon lens (variable f# from 1.8 to 11).
RESOLVING POWER TEST TARGET

-2
2 .IIIIII=. z
3 _ III
III= 4
III= S
III =_ni 111E 6

=111 _2
Ell' III
USAF 1951

Figure 3. The 1951 USAF test target was used with a uniform white back-light to determine the optical resolution of
the imaging system.

thick scintillator, decreasing the aperture size of an optical system results in less light being collected through
the lens.

2.1 Optical Resolution Measurement

The resolution of the commercial Canon prototype lens for the planned monolithic scintillator system was tested
by taking images of a 1951 USAF resolution test target, see figure 3, at varying distances from the focal plane,
with two different f# settings. The distances at which measurements were taken were between -10 mm and
+10 mm (the focal plane being 0 mm) for the f/# 1.8 setting to mimic the width of the 2 cm scintillator, and
between -20 mm and +20 mm for f/# 6.7 to illustrate the effect of decreasing the aperture on the depth of
field. The resolution of each image, measured as one sigma of a Gaussian distribution, is acquired by fitting an
error function to a lineout of the image intensity across a white-black edge in the test target, a method that
agrees well with tabulated resolution values for the USAF target at 20% contrast. When plotting the resolution
data for both f/# 1.8 and f/# 6.7 apertures, the graph shows the change in resolution away from the focal
plane follows a quadratic function, see figure 4. It can be seen how a decrease in aperture increases the depth of
field. Each measured resolution point around the focal plane can be described using a Gaussian distribution,8
which depicts the optical blur or point spread function of the optical system at that distance. Integrating the
Gaussian distributions along the full 2 cm thickness of the scintillator, the complete optical blur along the 2 cm

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 Quadratic Fit f/1.8 Quadratic Fit f/6.7
= 0.00029 *x2 + 0.0017 *X + 0.11
0.35 0.35

0.3 0.3

0.25 0.25
co co
E E
0.2 0.2
iT) V)
r 0.15 r 0.15
0.1 0.1

0.05 0.05
-10 -5 0 5 10 -20 -10 0 10 20
Distance (mm) Distance (mm)

Figure 4. The resolution measured using the USAF test target at different positions in the source plane for two different
aperture settings (left: f/# 1.8, right: f/# 6.7) of the commercial Canon lens used in the prototype imaging system.
Gaussian f/1.8 µ = 1 mm Gaussian f/1.8 µ = 10 mm Lens Gaussian with fit)
1 1

0.8 0.8 0.8

c c c
O O O
+r 0.6 +r 0.6 +r 0.6
= = =

in' 0.4 in' 0.4 in' 0.4

8 8 8
0.2 0.2 0.2

0 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 9 9.5 10 10.5 11 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1

Distance (mm) Distance (mm) Distance (mm)

Figure 5. The Gaussian point spread function at two different distances within the scintillator, (left: 1 mm from focal
plane, center: 10 mm from the focal plane) and the total optical blur integrated over 2 cm for f/# 1.8 (right).

interval is obtained. The result is not fully Gaussian, but was fit with a Gaussian distribution to allow a simple
deconvolution of the total system resolution in the next step.

2.2 Neutron Radiography Measurement

The complete prototype system resolution for neutrons was measured using neutron radiography at LANSCE.
While the LANSCE facility delivers neutrons at a wide range of energies, using an MCP to time-gate the camera
allows for energy selection based on neutron time-of-flight to only include neutron energies relevant to ICF
imaging applications, namely 14.1 MeV fusion or down-scattered lower energy (6-12 MeV) neutrons. In the
experimental setup the neutron beam is centered on the top of a rolled tungsten edge, the lower part of the
beam is mostly absorbed or scattered, while the upper part continues to move towards the scintillator. The light
emitted by the scintillator is diverted using a mirror to a commercial Canon lens with f/# 1.8 , which focuses
the light onto a fast-gated MCP, coupled to an SI-800 camera, where the picture is captured onto a CCD sensor.
Figure 6 shows a typical image obtained of the test objects, the rolled tungsten edge and the copper step
wedge. To infer the system resolution a region of interest is selected symmetrically along the rolled edge. The
mean of the lineout in the region produces the edge spread function, as seen in figure 6. The resulting edge
spread function is fit with a modified error function, to account for the variable transmission across the rolled
edge, dependent on the radius of the rolled edge. The resulting sigma, corresponding to a Gaussian point spread
function, is a direct measure of the resolution of the system and was determined to be 470 µm.

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 2 cm EJ262 - 14 MeV f# 1.8

2 4 6 8 10
Distance [mm]

Figure 6. The radiographic image of the test objects shown in figure 2 (left), and the lineout across the region of interest
fit with a modified error function to measure the system resolution (right).

2.3 Resolution Deconvolution

The total system resolution measured using neutron radiography and shown in figure 6 is a convolution of the
optical blur of the system and the contribution from the scintillator itself, ie. the nature of the scintillation light
creation along the path of the recoil proton. To design a custom lens that satisfies the resolution requirements
for a neutron imaging system at NIF, the scintillator contribution to the resolution has to be determined. By
deconvolving the lens resolution (figure 5 - 311 µm) from that of the entire system (figure 6 - 470 µm), the
blur contribution from the scintillator is determined. Assuming a Gaussian point spread function for the optical
system and the total system, the deconvolution is a simple Gaussian deconvolution and the scintillator blur can
be expressed as a Gaussian as well. The resulting scintillator blur is 353 µm.
The required system resolution for NIF is 500 µm since the pinhole aperture array magnifications is approx-
imately 100x and the neutron imaging system will be designed to resolve up to 5 µm features in the burning
fusion fuel. For a total system resolution of 500 µm and the scintillator contribution measured to be 353 µm in
this paper, a custom lens to be designed for the new imaging system has to satisfy a resolution requirement of
354 µm integrated over 2 cm object thickness. To achieve this resolution across the entire field of view the design
is expected to be telecentric, in order to decrease the effect of off-axis blur in the 2 cm thick volumetric source.

3. PHOTOMETRICS
Having defined the resolution requirement for a custom lens design for the new neutron imaging system, a
photometrics calculation determines the required aperture size of the lens. As seen in figure 4 a large aperture
and the required depth of field are trade-offs when designing a lens.

3.1 Light Collection from a Monolithic Scintillator

We assume scintillation light is produced in the center of the slab for this calculation and emitted isotropically.
Only light at an angle smaller than the critical half angle θc of total internal reflection can leave the monolithic
slab.
1
θc = sin−1 ( ). (1)
n
For a scintillator refractive index n = 1.58 in the EJ262 plastic studied the critical angle θc = 39◦ . The fraction
of light Femit escaping the monolithic scintillator from one face is
Z Z θc
Ω 1 1 1
Femit = = dΩ = 2π sin θdθ = (1 − cos θc ). (2)
4π 4π 4π 0 2
The light Femit is mapped into 2π outside of the slab according to Snell’s law

ni sin θi = nj sin θj (3)

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 and for nj = 1 (air) the angle outside of the slab is

θj = sin−1 (ni θi ). (4)

For the novel neutron imaging design we want to maximize light collection while maintaining resolution require-

Figure 7. Only light emitted within the critical angle θc leaves the monolithic scintillator, being mapped into 2 π. The
acceptance angle of the lens θaccept is reduced inside of the slab by the relation in equation 3.

ments. The numerical aperture for a preliminary lens design is f/# 2.5, which corresponds to an acceptance half
angle of
θaccept = sin−1 (N Alens ) = 11.5◦ . (5)
Using equation 3 we see that the acceptance angle is smaller inside the scintillator
N Alens sin θaccept
θacceptIn = sin−1 ( ) = sin−1 ( ) = 7.3◦ . (6)
ni ni
Assuming we collect the light inside of the scintillator volume, the fraction of light collected is
1
Fcollect = (1 − cos θacceptIn ) = 0.004 (7)
2
or 0.4% for the desired lens design. In our prototype tests with a lens with f/# 1.8, the fraction of light collected
is 0.78%. The neutron imaging system lens with f/# 3.3 currently installed at NIF would collect 0.23% of
the monolithic scintillator light produced. For the fiber array currently used at NIF the calculation is slightly
different, since light guiding and trapping efficiency in the fibers have to be taken into account - there the current
f/# 3.3 lens actually collects 0.27% of the light.

3.2 Scintillation Light Production and Detection

The EJ262 plastic scintillator considered in this study emits 8700 Photons per MeV of deposited energy into
4π. The average energy deposited by 14 MeV fusion neutrons is 4.1 MeV according to simulations using the
SCINFUL code, producing 36.9k Photons P havg in the plastic. For a photocathode efficiency Ef fpc of 10% the
number of photoelectrons per neutron interaction PE becomes

P E = P havg Fcollect Ef fpc , (8)

which is 6.6 photoelectrons/ neutron for the currently installed neutron imaging system with the fiber array
and the f/# 3.3 lens. In the prototype system with the 2 cm thick plastic scintillator and the f/# 1.8 lens, we
detect 28 photoelectrons/ neutron. For the desired f/# 2.5 lens design the number changes to 14 photoelectrons/
neutron, still above the 6.6 photoelectrons detected in the currently installed system and well suited for detection
of every neutron interaction in the scintillator.

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 4. CONCLUSIONS AND OUTLOOK
Using the optical test measurements and neutron radiography at LANSCE described in this paper, we have
determined the required resolution and aperture size for a custom lens design for the next generation neutron
imaging system at NIF. Preliminary design work with Mission Support and Test Services, LLC has shown that a
telecentric lens design satisfying the desired requirements is feasible. A completed design is expected in December
2018, the new neutron imaging system is slated for installation at NIF in July 2019, allowing a three-dimensional
density reconstruction of hot spot and cold fuel in inertial confinement fusion implosions for the first time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Los Alamos National Lab-
oratory under contract DE-AC52-06NA25396 and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract
DE-AC52- 07NA27344.

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