Advanced radiation physics for microdosimetry and low-level gamma-ray spectrometry

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Many people are exposed daily to ionizing radiation occupationally or as a result of diagnosis and treatment of disease. It is important that we are able to quantify radiation dose (deposited energy per mass) accurately. Particularly for mixed radiation fields such as neutrons plus gamma-rays, accurate dose measurements are challenging. As radiation effects take place at the cellular or sub-cellular level, radiation dose for a micrometric volume of tissue is the primary information. This area of radiation physics is microdosimetry, which has been the best way to quantify radiation dose and analyze radiation quality. To address the fundamental limitations of the standard microdosimetric techniques, the goal of this Discovery research is to develop advanced radiation detectors and signal processing systems. We recently successfully developed the THick Gas Electron Multiplier (THGEM) detector, a new type of a gaseous detector which offers many advantages over the standard device. Founded on this pioneering work, we propose to develop a position sensitive detector which can collect spatial dose distributions accurately.