Patent ID: 9651684
Date: 2017-05-16
CPC Classifications: G01T

Claim:
1. A radiation detector comprising: a radiation sensing element that is configured to produce light in response to capturing radiation; a neutron moderator that converts a fast neutron to a thermal neutron; a photosensor optically coupled to the radiation sensing element and operative to convert light emitted by the radiation sensing element into an electronic signal pulse; a low-level discriminator to identify a pulse from the photosensor below a first energy level or a first amplitude as a noise pulse; an upper-level discriminator to identify a pulse from the photosensor above a second energy level or a second amplitude as a neutron pulse or an ionic particle pulse; a pulse-shape discriminator to process a pulse having an energy of at least the first energy level and no greater than the second energy level to discriminate between pulses corresponding to neutrons or ionic particles and pulses corresponding to gamma rays or other radiation without an ionic particle; and a neutron counter configured to count a pulse as the neutron pulse or the ionic particle pulse after the pulse is identified by the pulse-shape discriminator as corresponding to the neutron pulse or the ionic particle pulse.