Deep Multitask Learning Models for Radiation Estimation at High Energy Accelerator Facility

Abstract

Controlling the dose of radiation exposure in potential radioactive facilities is critical for ensuring the safety of staff and the public. In this article, we developed machine learning (ML) models to estimate radiation exposure efficiently at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab), aiming to enhance safety in both accelerator facilities and public areas. Multiple sensors were deployed around the three experimental halls at JLab. Data on single-beam currents, energy levels, and radiation values at the sensor locations were collected during accelerator operation. We proposed a multitask learning (MTL) model for radiation estimation, using either 1-D convolutional neural networks (1D CNNs) or long short-term memory (LSTM) networks as the backbone. The proposed model was trained to simultaneously estimate radiation levels at the sensor locations. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed model with LSTM backbone achieved the best estimation performance, with an average $R {^{{2}}}$ score of 0.7557 for estimation within the same year and 0.7157 for estimation across different years. These results significantly surpassed those of competing models.