The research of estimating the location of radioactive sources using the Bayesian estimation

Abstract The paper considers the problem of estimating the parameters of radioactive point sources (their locations) that potentially exist in a designated space using measurements collected by plastic scintillator detector array. In this paper, Bayesian estimation method and sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) method were adopted. In the methods, the minimum square error estimator of parameters of sources were acquired according to the posterior mean. The simulation analysis shows that the Bayesian method can accurately estimate the parameter of radioactive sources with a measured background and source intensity data. The factors affecting the accuracy of estimation were carried out.