Exploratory research of technology development on high-resolution subsurface fracture imaging by the straight-forward muon

由于田中和他的团队最近成功地用MUOGRAPH成像了地下岩浆室，这种方法在日本是首创的，有可能为我们在地下勘探领域带来一种新的勘探工具。然而，要将这种方法推广到地下勘探领域，不仅需要成像岩浆室，还需要成像更难的裂缝，因为它们的密度对比度更小，尺寸也更小。因此，本研究主要针对骨折影像进行研究。然而，我们意识到田中和他的团队在我们的研究道路上也在推广同样的想法，他们几乎成功地追踪到了沿活动断层的大气水的质量转移。这种方法似乎已经是一种适用的勘探方法。因此，我们略微改变了研究目标，在青森县的客田和冈村火山田寻找最佳的断层观测地点。研究了井内断层成像在地热勘探中应用的可能性。我们还发起了在田中及其组织的保护伞下组织关于笔迹的合作研究(Muraoka等人，2012年；田中和村冈，2012年)。

As Tanaka and his group recently succeeded to image subsurface magma chambers by Muography, this method was initiated in Japan and has a potential to bring us a new exploration tool in the subsurface exploration field. However, to spread this method into the subsurface exploration field, it is necessary to image not only magma chambers but also fractures which are one step harder in terms of their smaller density contrast as well as their smaller sizes. This study is then to aims at fracture imaging. However, we realized that Tanaka and his group are also promoting the same idea on the way of our study, and they are almost successful to trace a mass transfer of meteoric water along an active fault. This method seems already an applicable exploration method. Therefore, we have slightly changed our study objectives to seek optimum fault observation localities in the Hakkoda and Okiura volcanic fields in Aomori Prefecture. We have studied a possibility of the intra-borehole Muography in the geothermal exploration. We have also initiated to organize the collaboration study on Muography under the Tanaka and his group’s umbrella (Muraoka et al., 2012; Tanaka and Muraoka, 2012).