Ionizing particle detection and clasification using CMOS commercial imagers

PEREZ, MARTÍN; SOFO HARO, MIGUEL; RONDÓN, DAVID; MORA, CARLOS; SIDELNIK, IVAN; GOMEZ BERISSO, MARIANO; LIPOVETZKY, JOSE; BLOSTEIN J.

Bariloche

Workshop; International School on the Effects of Radiation on Embedded Systems for Space Applications; 2014

Instituto Balseiro

The detection and clasification of ionizing particles has applications in personal dosimetry, instrumentation and control of nuclear reactors, scientific research and nuclear medicine. Traditionally used detectors as Geiger tubes, scintillator materials coupled to photomultiplier tubes, ionizing chambers, are expensive and too large to be used in many portable or low cost applications. Our research group is developing an alternative radiation detectors based on low cost CMOS image sensors, originally designed for light detection. These detectors have a space resolution equal to the pixel pitch, a time resolution equal to the read-out frame speed and an charge resolution limited by the electronic read-out noise of each pixel. An interesting feature of the CMOS sensors is that it is possible to identify the kind of incident particle because each one leaves a distinctive shape or "signature" in the recorded image. In this work, we present the images obtained by exposing a low cost CMOS video camera to different radiation sources: X-rays, alpha particles, gammas, neutrons, and neutrons and gammas produced by the RA6 research nuclear reactor.