Calculation of the decision thresholds for radionuclides identified in gamma-ray spectra by post-processing peak analysis results

Abstract

A method for calculating the decision thresholds for gamma-ray emitters, identified in gamma-ray spectrometric analyses, is described. The method is suitable for application in computerized spectra-analyzing procedures. In the calculation, the number of counts and the uncertainty in the number of counts for the peaks associated with the emitter are used. The method makes possible to calculate decision thresholds from peaks on a curved background and overlapping peaks. The uncertainty in the number of counts used in the calculation was computed using Canberra׳s Standard Peak Search Program (Canberra, 1986, Peak Search Algorithm Manual 07-0064). For isolated peaks, the decision threshold exceeds the value calculated from the channel contents in an energy region that is 2.5 FWHM wide, covering the background in the immediate vicinity of the peak. The decision thresholds vary by approximately 20% over a dynamic range of peak areas of about 1000. In the case of overlapping peaks, the decision threshold increases considerably. For multi-gamma-ray emitters, a common decision threshold is calculated from the decision thresholds obtained from individual gamma-ray emissions, being smaller than the smallest of the individual decision thresholds.