Patent ID: 8168953

Claim:
A method of measuring the dose and/or the dose rate of radiation, comprising the steps of: exposing a detector means to a radiation environment, said detector means comprising an array of detector elements, wherein each of the detector elements comprises a volume cell of sensor material in which electrical charges can be generated upon interaction with radiation quanta, switching the detector means in a sensitive state for the duration of a sensitive time period, during said sensitive time period, recording an interaction pattern generated by individual radiation quanta interacting with one or more of the detector elements using a read-out circuit for detecting the charge generated upon interaction with radiation quanta, said read-out circuit being connected to received a signal for switching the read-out circuit between a sensitive state, in which electric charges generated in said volume cell are detected, and an idle state, in which said charges are not detected, wherein the step of recording the interaction pattern comprises generating a pixelized image, where each pixel of the image corresponds to one of the detector elements, analyzing the interaction pattern to distinguish individual radiation quanta received during said sensitive time period, wherein distinguishing radiation quanta comprises a recognition of cluster patterns of pixels in said pixelized image, assigning a radiation category to each of the distinguished radiation quanta based on its corresponding interaction pattern, and computing the dose and/or a dose rate of radiation from the detected and categorized radiation quanta, wherein in said step of computing the dose and/or dose rate a quality factor associated with each radiation category is accounted for.