Ground Radioactivity Distribution Reconstruction and Dose Rate Estimation Based on Spectrum Deconvolution

Estimating the gamma dose rate at one meter above ground level and determining the distribution of radioactive pollution from aerial radiation monitoring data are the core technical issues of unmanned aerial vehicle nuclear radiation monitoring. In this paper, a reconstruction algorithm of the ground radioactivity distribution based on spectral deconvolution was proposed for the problem of regional surface source radioactivity distribution reconstruction and dose rate estimation. The algorithm estimates unknown radioactive nuclide types and their distributions using spectrum deconvolution and introduces energy windows to improve the accuracy of the deconvolution results, achieving accurate reconstruction of multiple continuous distribution radioactive nuclides and their distributions, as well as dose rate estimation of one meter above ground level. The feasibility and effectiveness of the method were verified through cases of single-nuclide (¹³⁷Cs) and multi-nuclide (¹³⁷Cs and ⁶⁰Co) surface sources by modeling and solving them. The results showed that the cosine similarities between the estimated ground radioactivity distribution and dose rate distribution with the true value were 0.9950 and 0.9965, respectively, which could prove that the proposed reconstruction algorithm would effectively distinguish multiple radioactive nuclides and accurately restore their radioactivity distribution. Finally, the influences of statistical fluctuation levels and the number of energy windows on the deconvolution results were analyzed, showing that the lower the statistical fluctuation level and the more energy window divisions, the better the deconvolution results.