A Low Cost Environmental Ionizing Radiation Detector Based on COTS CMOS Image Sensors

CLARA LUCIA GALIMBERTI; FABRICIO ALCALDE BESSIA; MARTIN PEREZ; MARIANO GOMEZ BERISSO; MIGUEL SOFO HARO; IVAN SIDELNIK; JERONIMO BLOSTEIN; HERNAN ASOREY; JOSE LIPOVETZKY

Tucuman

Congreso; 2018 IEEE Biennial Congress of Argentina (ARGENCON); 2018

Universidad Nacional de Tucuman

We present the development of a system for the detection of ionizing radiation based on the Omnivision OV5647 Commercial Off The Shelf image sensor. The data is read and processed in real-time using a Raspberry Pi 3 computer. The amount of charge and geometrical characteristics of the cluster of pixels exited when a particle interacts with the sensor is recorded and used to identify the type of incoming particle, distinguishing between alpha particles and X-ray or gamma photons. The software was programmed in C using the OpenCV library. The system was tested with 137 Cs and 241 Am radiation sources.