Speaker
Description
Tissue equivalency in terms of mass energy-absorption coefficients is particularly important in operational radiation protection, as the energy of the incident radiation field can vary significantly. In this regard, air would be nearly ideal as a detector material—were it not for its low density, which severely limits the number of interactions in practical radiation protection scenarios. Commercial organic scintillators offer higher sensitivity but exhibit dosimetric underresponse at energies below 100 keV due to their composition. In this work, a novel material is presented that achieves nearly ideal tissue equivalence over a broad energy range. Combined with fast, dead-time-free data acquisition hardware, this enables accurate dosimetry in pulsed radiation fields, as pile-up effects in intense pulses can be properly addressed. A portable dose rate meter for the quantities H′(0.07) and H*(10) has been developed and tested. Dosimetric validation at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt was successfully completed. The device meets the criteria for official certification in the energy range from 15 keV to 7 MeV. Its response in pulsed fields remains unchanged compared to continuous fields within the designed operational range. Furthermore, field tests conducted in medical environments are presented.