An isotope identification injection study with GammaTracker

Abstract GammaTracker is a portable handheld radioisotope identifier using position sensitive CdZnTe detectors. High confidence isotope identification is possible on GammaTracker owing to the system’s relatively high energy resolution and count rate sensitivity. A study was undertaken to evaluate the isotope identification performance of a prototype unit. Background and source spectra for various nuclides were measured and then randomly sampled to simulate various integration times and source intensities. The resulting spectral data sets were then run through the isotope identification algorithm to determine the probability of detection and the false alarm rate for each nuclide. The process was repeated for various isotope identification input parameters until an optimized set was achieved. This paper presents results from the injection study.