Design of a radio-frequency transceiver coil for landmine detection in Colombia by nuclear quadrupole resonance.

This paper shows the design of a radio-frequency transceiver coil for landmine detection in Colombia by nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR). The radio-frequency transceiver coil is of great importance as it is responsible for exciting the target explosive and for picking up the weak NQR signal; however, little detail is found on the literature about its design. The strategy followed on this work consisted on constructing and experimentally comparing five different radio-frequency transceiver coils, whose dimensions were selected according to four design parameters: noise rejection, magnetic flux density, coil sensitivity, and quality factor; taking into account the characteristics of landmines in Colombia, the second country most affected by anti-personnel mines in the world. The constructed coils were experimentally compared using a portable system and with three of them, the system was capable of detecting 200 g ammonium nitrate (the main substance used in Colombian landmines) up to 3 cm from the coil within 12 s, with a steady-state free precession pulse sequence. Conclusions from this work could help to guide RF coil design in other works that apply NQR for remote detection of substances in non-shielded environments and to direct future research about landmine detection in Colombia.

Spectral descriptors and supervised classifier for ammonium nitrate detection in landmines by nuclear quadrupole resonance.

The high specificity of Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance (NQR) makes it very suited for the detection of antipersonnel mines, where the intensity of the signal spectrum around the resonance frequency of the target substance is the standard decision parameter; however, radiofrequency interference, soil effects on the search coil, landmine size, burial depth, and target temperature affect signal intensity. To overcome this, the use of spectral descriptors and a supervised classifier are proposed in this work, where an assembly of decision trees was trained with NQR data collected on places where a target filled with ammonium nitrate was present and where it was not. A statistical test, comparing the proposed classifier and the solution based solely on the intensity of the signal spectrum, showed with significant evidence that the proposed classifier outperforms the traditional solution. A final blind experiment was conducted in a rural region of Colombia, where five landmines of different size filled with ammonium nitrate were shallowly buried in an area of 1.9 × 1.52 m, and the system with the proposed classifier detected four of them with three false alarms. This work is also novel in detecting ammonium nitrate in antipersonnel mines, which are typical in Colombia, the second most mined country in the world.

Variable-pitch rectangular cross-section radiofrequency coils for the nitrogen-14 nuclear quadrupole resonance investigation of sealed medicines packets.

The performance of rectangular radio frequency (RF) coils capable of being used to detect nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) signals from blister packs of medicines has been compared. The performance of a fixed-pitch RF coil was compared with that from two variable-pitch coils, one based on a design in the literature and the other optimized to obtain the most homogeneous RF field over the whole volume of the coil. It has been shown from (14)N NQR measurements with two medicines, the antibiotic ampicillin (as trihydrate) and the analgesic medicine Paracetamol, that the latter design gives NQR signal intensities almost independent of the distribution of the capsules or pills within the RF coil and is therefore more suitable for quantitative analysis.

Nuclear quadrupole resonance of methamphetamine hydrochloride.

The pulsed nuclear quadrupole resonance method was used to search for the NQR frequencies of (14)N in methamphetamine hydrochloride based on quantum chemical estimates. The NQR spectrum peaks were observed at ν(+)=1.217 MHz and ν(-)=0.654 MHz. The temperature dependences of the NQR frequencies and relaxation properties were investigated for the purpose of stand-off sensing of illicit drugs. The NQR frequency shifts for ν(+) and ν(-) were approximately 0.22 kHz/K and 0.10 kHz/K, respectively, around room temperature. The spin-lattice relaxation times and spin-phase memory times were 8.3 ms-10.0 ms and 0.65 ms -0.86 ms, respectively.

Simulation of nuclear quadrupole resonance for sensor probe optimization.

A simulation method to estimate the detection efficiency of nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) was proposed for optimizing a sensing probe operating at radio frequencies (RFs). It first calculates the transmitted magnetic field from the probe coil to the target sample. The nuclei make quadrupole resonance by it. We considered this nonlinear reaction to estimate NQR emission by the nuclei. Then the received NQR signal intensity from the sample at the probe coil. We calculated the efficiency by testing two different probe types (solenoid and gradiometer) and by changing the relative positions of the probe and sample. The simulation results were in good agreement with the experimental results.

Nuclear quadrupole resonance of norephedrine.

Toward searching for illegal drugs, we investigated the pulsed nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) response of 14N in (1R,2S)-(-)-norephedrine, based on the predictions of quantum chemical calculations. Two pairs of spectral lines (ν+=3.089, 3.093 MHz and ν-=2.594, 2.608 MHz) were observed despite its molecule structure having only a single nitrogen atom. This indicates that the molecular crystal has two nonequivalent nitrogen atoms in the unit cell. The temperature dependence of the NQR frequencies and relaxation properties were investigated for the purpose of accurate remote sensing of the drugs. The NQR frequency shift was approximately 0.23 kHz/K around room temperature. The spin-lattice relaxation and spin-phase memory times were 5.2-10.2 ms and 0.6-1.5 ms, respectively.

Nuclear quadrupole resonance echoes from hexamethylenetetramine.

We investigated the echo phenomenon of nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) from hexamethylenetetramine (HMT). We detected the pure NQR echo signal of HMT with a short pulse interval. The intensity of the echo signal increased as the pulse interval time was decreased. We observed that a clean echo signal was generated even when the pulse interval was shorter than the decay time constant T(2)(*). Since the short interval time gives a strong echo, our result insists that shorter interval time is preferred for the NQR detection.