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AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army
InventorsStanley Kronenberg, George J. Brucker
Estimating the term…
A radiation sensor and/or imager is formed by sandwiching two materials having different atomic numbers (Z) around a radiation detector, such as scintilator or Geiger-Mueller type radiation counters, or solid state radiation detectors, such as those made of silicon). In one embodiment of the present invention, a thin layer of lead (Pb) is placed on one side of a Geiger-Mueller radiation counter and a layer of Lucite.TM. is disposed on the opposite side. One example, of a preferred Geiger-Mueller counter which may be used in the present invention is a modified pancake Geiger-Mueller counter with thin ruby mica windows, approximately 2.8 mg/cm.sup.2 thick on both sides. By disposing a high Z material on one side of a radiation detector such as a Geiger-Mueller (GM) or a Scintillator Counter (SC) and a low Z material on an opposite side of either type of the counter, it is possible to detect the photo-Compton electrons emitted from the high or low Z material in the forward or backward directions and the attenuation of the emitted electrons by the high Z material. Because the Geiger-Mueller or scintillation counter can detect single events, the directional radiation detector according to the present invention can detect radiation intensities down to background radiation levels, which is approximately 0.15 .mu.Gy h.sup.-1. Given the difference in the count rate (or intensity), the direction of the radiation source may be easily calculated by simply rotating the detector or by having two counters displaced in different angles (such as 180 degrees) so as to be able to take the difference of the number counts (or mirrors of the intensities).
A directional radiation detector comprising:
A directional radiation detector comprising:
A radiation imager comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.