DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office is soliciting innovative approaches and new methods to address challenges in low signal-to-noise image enhancement in long standoff X-ray scenarios where motion blur is also present. Specifically, such methods must be able to create useful inferences in imaging scenarios where there is no prior information available about the interior composition of the object being imaged.
XENA is an algorithm development program only. Advances to X-ray source or detector hardware to increase signal-to-noise ratio are out of scope.
If successful, the research conducted under XENA may create a new field – the exploitation and use of unresolved X-rays (as well as gamma ray, muons and other energies).
Today’s state of the art for transmission X-ray is set by industrial or medical imaging transmission X-ray CT, which uses precisely calibrated equipment with exposure settings optimized for high contrast. Applications such as X-ray ptychography and PET scans rarely exceed single meter ranges between X-ray source and the object being imaged. XENA aims to push this state of the art out by approximately three orders of magnitude – from single-meter ranges to single-kilometer ranges.
XENA will attempt to explore novel ways of exploiting low-SNR processing to extract information for the X-ray domain in the face of three complicating technical challenges:
(1) unprecedented long distances between X-ray source/detector and objects being imaged;
(2) accompanying motion blur at long ranges; and
(3) lack of prior information about the interior of the imaged object.
An example application that requires innovations for all three of these challenges is aerial drone-based offshore cargo container inspection, once a ship has entered territorial waters, but before it docks at a crowded port.
XENA is focused on imaging man-made objects; only methods that work for hard X-rays ( ≥150 keV) are of interest.
XENA will be a two phase program:
- Phase 1 – proof-of-concept – 6 months – up to USD$250,000
- Phase 2 – advanced development – 12 months
Abstracts are due 24 October 2024, via email to XENA@darpa.mil.
Document
Program Solicitation – XENA: DARPA-PS-24-22+Amend1
