Purpose:
- Analysis of gamma spectra of the known composition, e.g. of the natural radionuclides, Ra, Th
- Control of the analyzer and spectrum accumulation parameters
- Calibration in energy, half-width, and detection sensitivity
- Calculation of activities, errors, and MDA (minimum detectable activity)
- User’s graphical interface employing windows, the menu, and the mouse
Description:
The program carries out fast analysis of gamma spectra of the known radionuclide composition by the method of summation in energy ranges in a user-convenient interactive mode with communication through the menu and windows. Both the keyboard and the mouse can be used for the work.
The spectrum to process can be read from the ADC or the disc. A wide set of scaling functions is available for viewing the spectrum. Information on the sample parameters can be stored for each spectrum; this information will be saved together with the spectrum as the latter is recorded to the disc.
The program includes procedures for calibration of the system. The energy and half-width calibrations are approximated by polynomials up to degree 3. The calibration points can be specified manually, by the marker’s position, or (for half-width calibration) automatically from the latest result of the spectrum analysis. A special feature of the program is its ability to carry out calibration on the basis of several different spectra, the calibration points derived from each previous spectrum being saved and used in the calculation together with new ones. The quality of the calibration can be visually assessed from the plotted curve.
The set of nuclides to measure and energy ranges are specified by the user. At the sensitivity calibration, pulse count rates are calculated in the ranges for each reference source. The calibration can carried out for reference sources of various density.
To calculate the sample activity, the sample spectrum is decomposed into the measured background spectrum and the spectra of the reference sources the quality of the decomposition is assessed. The activity and MDA measurement errors are calculated for each radionuclide. The activities can be normalized to the weight or volume of the sample. The units of activity are set by the user. The program makes correction for the decay during the time for which the sample was left to stand.
Based on the results of the analysis the program generates a report, which includes a table of the peaks found, a table of energy ranges, and a table of nuclide activities. The form of the tables and the report may be specified by the user. The report can be displayed, printed, or stored as a file. It is also possible to print a plot of the spectrum.
The program requires MS-DOS, 640 KB RAM, a floppy or hard disc drive, a VGA graphical adapter.
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