Coincidence-summing in

Gamma-ray spectrometry.
IEC 1452 Standard
GESPECOR software
Octavian Sima
Physics Department
Bucharest University

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 Overview
• IEC 1452 standard
• Coincidence-summing effects
• GESPECOR software
• - decay scheme data
• - Monte Carlo simulation
• - examples
• Summary and conclusions

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1. IEC STANDARD 1452 (1995)
• Purpose:
- to establish methods for the calibration and
measurement of energy and  emission rate with Ge
detectors and on this basis to assess the activity
- to provide tests for checking that the system and the
analysis are adequate
• Calibration and peak analysis
• Energy and emission rate measurement (corrections)
• Quality control of the spectrometry system
• Quality control of the analysis software
• Quality control of the complete system
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• Emission rate measurement => required corrections:
- count rate in the interfering background peaks
- decay corrections
- random summing, pile-up corrections
- true coincidence-summing corrections
- attenuation (self-attenuation + external)
• True coincidence-summing
- magnitude of the effect N(E1)/N(E2) =f(distance)
E1E2, E1 with coincidence, E2 without
- Appendix C – principles and examples (1-st order)
• Nuclide identification
- peak search, library data
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 2. Coincidence-summing effects
• Summing out =>
losses from peaks
(apparent efficiency is
lower than correct
efficiency)
• Summing in =>
additional counts due
to1+2 in the peak of
3 (apparent efficiency
for 3 is higher than
correct efficiency)

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 Magnitude of coincidence-summing effects
• Enhanced in high efficiency measurement conditions
=> more important in present day measurements
(tendency to use high efficiency)
• Depend on the detailed decay scheme of the nuclide
(peak energy, probability of emission of other photons
in cascade, energy of the cascading photons)
=> nuclide dependent efficiency
• Depend on the geometry (including surrounding
materials), matrix
=> Difficult to evaluate: nuclear data + radiation transport

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 3. GESPECOR
• GERMANIUM SPECTROSCOPY
CORRECTION FACTORS, authors Sima,
Arnold, Dovlete
Realistic Monte Carlo calculation of:
- self-attenuation
- coincidence-summing corrections
- efficiency (including non-uniform
activity distribution)

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 GESPECOR: coincidence-summing
• Nuclear data:
- sources: NUCLEIDE, ENSDF (Oct. 2004)
- 200 nuclides, 250 records
- completely automatic evaluation
- arbitrary decay scheme
- based on graph theory
- better than Monte Carlo simulation of the
decay scheme
- without the limitations of the matrix formalism
- user friendly interfaces

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 GESPECOR: coincidence-summing
• Radiation transport:
- realistic Monte Carlo simulation
- powerful variance reduction techniques
- detailed detector description (including a
complex structure of the dead layer)
- detailed description of the sample (geometry,
matrix) and surrounding materials
• User friendly interfaces

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 GESPECOR: coincidence-summing
Well-type HPGe detector (PTB, Braunschweig)

• Higher order
1.E+07

511 keV 1022 keV

1.E+06
1275 keV 1786 keV
2297 keV effects
1.E+05
• Count-rate
Counts per channel

1.E+04 reduction: 6
1.E+03
(1275 keV),
7.5 (511 keV)
1.E+02
• Good
1.E+01
agreement with
1.E+00 exp. (5%)
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000
Energy in keV
 GESPECOR: coincidence-summing
Corrected efficiency vs. mono-gamma
efficiency (well-type HPGe detector)
1
FEP Efficiency
Apparent FEP Effic. (Exp)
Corrected Efficiency
0.8 Na-22 Monte Carlo
Co-60 Monte Carlo
Y-88 Monte Carlo
Sb-125 Monte Carlo
0.6 Cs-134 Monte Carlo
Efficiency

0.4

0.2

0
0 500 1000 1500 2000
Energy in keV
• Corrections factors for the main peaks
required for activity determination, but:
• All features of the spectra should be
correctly described (including small peaks
and pure sum peaks)
- peak interference
- nuclide identification problems
• Present day tendency: completely automatic
analysis of spectra => requires improvement
[Arnold, Blaauw, Fazinic, Kolotov, Nucl.
Instrum. Meth. A 536 (2005) 196 ]

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 GESPECOR: coincidence-summing
Sum peaks with X-rays (n-type HPGe)

Ba-133 spectrum - low energy part

• Ba-133 point
1.0E+07
source
• Corrections
3
12
1.0E+06
4

1.0E+05
1
6
8
9
19
in good
20 24

agreement
Counts

2 10 13
5
7 11 15 17 21 22 25 26
14 16 18 23
1.0E+04

with
1.0E+03
experimental
1.0E+02
0 50 100 150 200 250
data (PTB)
Energy (keV)
 GESPECOR: coincidence-summing
Sum peaks with X-rays (n-type HPGe)

Ba-133 spectrum - high energy part

• Ba-133 point
1.0E+06
41
source
32

• Corrections
29 47 48 56
1.0E+05
37
3 49
52
3
1.0E+04
27
28
30 31
34

35
3 39
42
43
45

46
53
54
61

62
in good
40 44 50 55

agreement
Counts

57
1.0E+03 51
58 59
6
0

1.0E+02
with
1.0E+01
experimental
1.0E+00
250 300 350
Energy (keV)
400 450 500 data (PTB)
 4. Summary and conclusions
• Coincidence-summing effects enhanced in present
day measurements
• All features present in the spectra should be
properly described
• GESPECOR is able to provide correction factors
in agreement with experimental values (5% simple
decay schemes, 10-15% complex decay schemes,
with important higher order corrections)
• High quality nuclear data required, including the
covariance matrix (not yet available) to satisfy the
ever increasing quality requirements.

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