P value estimation for a dead time distorted Poisson distribution measured using a nuclear radiation counting system

Abstract

The P value used to estimate the statistical significance of a nuclear counting system was evaluated in the context of dead time. As the detector dead time increases, the P value also increases larger than 0.5. For a number of samples with batch size of 50, the dead time of a radiation detection system should be kept within 23 % if the P value is to be less than 0.9.