Prototype of hand-held Compton spectrometer for the spectrometric and dosimetric control of X-ray generators

The Compton spectrometer is a device in which radiation coming from an X-ray generator is scattered at a known angle in order to reduce the flux and to allow spectrometric measurements without saturating the detector. A small-size prototype Compton spectrometer usable in the range 20-150 key was developed, using a pen-type NaI detector. The source spectrum is reconstructed by unfolding the measured spectrum using the response matrix calculated by the Monte-Carlo method. The Monte-Carlo geometrical model was validated with gamma-ray point sources. Unfolding is performed using a modified version of the GRAVEL algorithm. Results are presented for the unfolded spectrum obtained with a test measurement on a medical X-ray device. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.