• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.137-142
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• 2018

Background: Gamma-ray detectors having a thin window of a material with low atomic number can increase the true coincidence summing effects for radionuclides emitting X-rays or gamma-rays. This effect can make efficiency calibration or spectrum analysis more complicated. In this study, a Cu shield was tested as an X-ray filter to neglect the true coincidence summing effect by X-rays and gamma-rays in gamma-ray spectrometry, in order to simplify gamma-ray energy spectrum analysis. Materials and Methods: A Cu shield was designed and applied to an n-type high-purity germanium detector having an $X-{\gamma}$ summing effect during efficiency calibration. This was tested using a commercial, certified mixed gamma-ray source. The feasibility of a Cu shield was evaluated by comparing efficiency calibration results with and without the shield. Results and Discussion: In this study, the thickness of a Cu shield needed to avoid true coincidence summing effects due to $X-{\gamma}$ was tested and determined to be 1 mm, considering the detection efficiency desired for higher energy. As a result, the accuracy of the detection efficiency calibration was improved by more than 13% by reducing $X-{\gamma}$ summing. Conclusion: The $X-{\gamma}$ summing effect should be considered, along with ${\gamma}-{\gamma}$ summing, when a detection efficiency calibration is implemented and appropriate shielding material can be useful for simplifying analysis of the gamma-ray energy spectra.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.1754-1759
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• 2022

The activity of gamma-ray emitting nuclides is calculated assuming that each gamma-ray is detected individually; thus, the magnitude of the coincidence summing signal must be considered during activity calculations. Here, the correction factor for the coincidence summing effect was calculated, and the detection efficiencies of two HPGe detectors were compared. The CANBERRA Inc. GC4018 high-purity Ge detector provided an estimate for the peak-to-total ratio using a point source to determine the coincidence summing correction factor. The ORTEC Inc. GEM60 high-purity Ge detector uses EFFTRAN in LVis to obtain the parameters of the detector and source model and the gamma-gamma and gamma-X match estimates, in order to determine the coincidence summing correction factor. Nuclide analyses, radioactivity comparisons, and analyses of reference material samples were performed utilizing certified reference materials to accurately determine the detection efficiencies. For both Co-60 and Y-88, the detection efficiency for a point source increased by an average of at least 12-13%, whereas the detection efficiency determined using LVis increased by an average of at least 13-15%. The calculated radioactivity values of the certified reference material and reference material samples were accurate to within 3% and 6% of the measured values, respectively.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.169-172
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• 2005

The phase sensitivity of the coincidence detection in one output port of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer is analysed for twin Fock state inputs. Firstly, the ideal detectors with quantum efficiency of unity are assumed for the detection of the output photons. The sensitivity is found out to be independent of the photon number of input light, which means that the Heisenberg limit cannot be reached in the coincidence detection even with ideal detectors. Secondly, the practical detectors with quantum efficiencies less than unity are discussed.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.263-269
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• 2001

The influences of background and environmental noise on coincidence detection are investigated with entangled photons produced by parametric down-conversion process. When the down-converted photons are mixed with thermal light, the coincidence rate did not vary with increasing noise level because the accidental coincidences are discriminated at the short resolving time window. The entangled photon source and the coincidence technique can effectively be used for a noise-free communication channel in the new field of quantum information transmission and processing. ssing.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.328-332
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• 2016

Background: Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) is a new radiation therapy. In BNCT, there exists some very critical problems that should be solved. One of the severest problems is that the treatment effect cannot be known during BNCT in real time. We are now developing a SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) system (BNCT-SPECT), with a cadmium telluride (CdTe) semiconductor detector. BNCT-SPECT can obtain the BNCT treatment effect by measuring 478 keV gamma-rays emitted from the excited state of $^7Li$ nucleus created by $^{10}B(n,{\alpha})$ $^7Li$ reaction. In the previous studies, we investigated the feasibility of the BNCT-SPECT system. As a result, the S/N ratio did not meet the criterion of S/N > 1 because deterioration of the S/N ratio occurred caused by the influence of Compton scattering especially due to capture gamma-rays of hydrogen. Materials and Methods: We thus produced an arrayed detector with two CdTe crystals to test cross talk phenomenon and to examine an anti-coincidence detection possibility. For more precise analysis for the anti-coincidence detection, we designed and made a collimator having a similar performance to the real BNCT-SPECT. Results and Discussion: We carried out experiments with the collimator to examine the effect of cross talk of scattering gamma-rays between CdTe elements more practically. As a result of measurement the coincidence events were successfully extracted. Conclusion: We are now planning to carry out evaluation of coincidence rate from the measurement and comparison of it with the numerical calculations.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1998.05b
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• pp.464-469
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• 1998

A coincidence gamma-ray spectroscopy method was applied to reduce the background radioactivity for measuring the activity of radioisotopes in a sample in the presence of environmental natural radioactivity. A HPGe detector was used for the coincident spectrum as a main detector and a NaI(Tl) scintillation detector for gating purposes as an associated detector. For coincidence spectroscopy the whole energy spectrum of associated detector was used instead of gate signals. The coincident events obtained from the gating spectrum was evaluated by a coincidence computer program in this study instead of timing circuit. In this work, the background of detection environment was reduced to factor 100 and peaks to be determined was reduced to factor 30 using the coincidence gamma-ray spectroscopy.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.5-11
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• 1999

This paper reviews recent major activities on instrumentation and methodology of PET. The performance of the PET instrumentation can be expressed by four physical characteristics, 1) spatial resolution, 2) coincidence resolving time, 3) energy resolution, and 4) detection efficiency. The physical and technical aspects of PET systems are briefly discussed along with these characteristics. Toward high resolution PET the recent trend has been to design multiple rings of densely packed detector arrays with scintillators. In order to satisfy the sampling requirement in reconstruction, continuous detector units has been developed. Iterative image reconstruction algorithms have received considerable attention for improvement of both the sampling requirement and image quality toward the stationary PET. Better resolving time improves the maximum true coincidence rate, which is also increased with more detectors placed in coincidence with each other. It suggests that volume PET is promising for enhancement of detection efficiency. The scattered coincidence event rate may be reduced by using detectors with better energy resolution. The use of interplane septa, however, takes over improvement of energy resolution in 2D PET. Energy resolution becomes an important factor for image quality under the condition of septa removal such as volume PET. Toward full utilization of emitting photons, 3D reconstruction incorporating oblique rays has been studied, and volume reconstruction algorithms have been developed. Practical volume PET systems impose heavy burden not only to detector sets and coincidence circuits, but also to computers in the memory requirements and the data processing. In conclusion, there have been many ingenious methods in development of PET instrumentation, which are based on unique capability of PET. They will be expected to overcome technical limitations, and to approach the fundamental limits.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.76-80
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• 2020

Background: To improve the measurement accuracy of liquid-scintillation counting for activity standardization, it is necessary to significantly reduce the background caused by thermal noise or after-pulses. We have therefore improved a movable 3 photomultiplier (3PM)-γ coincidence-counting method using the logical sum of three double coincidences for β events. Materials and Methods: We designed a new data-acquisition system in which β events are obtained by counting the logical sum of three double coincidences. The change in β-detection efficiency can be derived by moving three photomultiplier tubes sequentially from the liquid-scintillation vial. The validity of the method was investigated by activity measurement of ¹³⁴Cs calibrated at the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) with 4π(PC)β-γ(NaI(Tl)) coincidence counting using a proportional counter (PC) for the β detector. Results and Discussion: Measurements were taken over 14 counting intervals for each liquidscintillation sample by displacing three photomultiplier tubes up to 45 mm from the sample. The dead time in each β- and γ-counting channel was adjusted to be a non-extending type of 20 ㎲. The background ranged about 1.2-3.3 s^-1, such that the contributions of thermal noise or after-pulses were negligible. As the β-detection unit was moved away from the sample, the β-detection efficiencies varied between 0.54 and 0.81. The result obtained by the method at the reference date was 396.3 ± 1.7 kBq/g. This is consistent with the KRISS-certified value of 396.0 ± 2.0 kBq/g within the uncertainty range. Conclusion: The movable 3PM-γ method developed in the present work not only succeeded in reducing background counts to negligible levels but enabled β-detection efficiency to be varied by a geometrical method to apply the efficiency extrapolation method. Compared with our earlier work shown in the study of Hwang et al. [2], the measurement accuracy has much improved. Consequently, the method developed in this study is an improved method suitable for activity standardization of β-γ emitters.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.423-428
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• 2022

Very low contents (in the range of 10^-9 g/g) of Ir in mantle-derived rock samples (komatiites) were non-destructively determined by INAA coupled with coincidence gamma-ray spectrometry using 16 Ge detectors. Aliquots of the same samples were analyzed by NiS fire-assay ICP-MS for Ir and other platinum group elements. Because the INAA procedure used in this study is non-destructive and is almost free from spectral interference in gamma-ray spectrometry, the INAA values of Ir contents obtained in this study can be highly reliable. Iridium values obtained by ICP-MS were consistent with the INAA values, implying that the ICP-MS values of Ir obtained in this study are equally reliable. Under the present experimental conditions, detection limits were estimated to be 1 pg/g, which corresponds to 0.1 pg for a sample mass of 0.1 g. These levels can be even lowered by an order of magnitude, if necessary, which cannot be achieved by ICP-MS carried out in this study.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.431-436
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• 2001

The effect of decorrelation on the coincidence is investigated with correlated photons produced by parametric down-conversion process. The degree of correlation between photon pairs is adjusted by changing the polarization dependent transmissivities of thin glass plate\ulcorner in front of two detectors. It was found that the single counts of each detectors are proportional to the transmissivity and the coincidence is proportional to the product of transmissivities of the glasses in front of two detectors.