​The Olympic Games are coming to Paris in 2024. And the security committee is planning on using a new breed of surveillance camera to prevent terrorist attacks using radioactive material at all concerned sites. They imagined a camera capable of detecting and locating radioactive material, of course. But that's not all: They also wanted the camera to be able to determine the nature and intensity of the radiation and follow a moving source of radiation through a crowd. This may sound like science fiction, but it could soon be a reality: The 2024 Paris Olympics security committee recently confirmed that the NuVISION camera, developed by NUVIA (a subsidiary of the Vinci group) in partnership with Leti, a CEA Tech institute, meets the committee's specifications. 

In technical terms, the CdZnTe spectrometric camera converts the gamma photons picked up by its sensor directly into electrical signals and, therefore, images. The images obtained are superimposed on conventional video images of a scene to reveal the presence and the nature of radioactive material in the scene and, thanks to the camera's dynamic imaging capabilities, track radioactive material as it moves through the scene, even if the camera is unstable.  

In addition to being approved by the security committee for the Paris Olympics, the camera made it on to the "most innovative technologies" list at the Milipol trade show held at the end of 2019. NuVISION was originally developed for the nuclear industry, and it also has applications in homeland security and surveillance at large events.