A big breakthrough for a big problem.
Each year, thousands are killed or maimed by land mines - a remnant scourge from past conflicts.
For the safe and efficient detection of these long hidden mines, a technological breakthrough was required.
The issue.
Traditional radiation detectors suffer from pulse pile up - they fail.
Traditional approaches to mine detection used neutron activation and gamma detectors to excite, and then detect, the materials in the landmines. Unfortunately, the response time and bandwidth of those detectors was limited meaning the process was dangerous, unreliable and slow.
Paul Scoullar, our founder and technical director, worked on this issue with Professor Rob Evans as part of his PhD at the University of Melbourne and developed the novel pulse processing algorithms that power our SItoro technology.
A broad solution.
Our SItoro pulse processing algorithms were built to address this.
Paul’s brother, David, saw this technology and was inspired to join the team. With their combined knowledge and experience, the brothers started building the Southern Innovation team into what it is today - a team of over 25 engineers and scientists with a passion for problem solving.
From humble beginnings solving this humanitarian disaster, our SItoro platform has now found applications in synchrotrons around the world as well as helping to solve problems in the recycling, mining and medical industries.