Patent ID: 7698099

Claim:
A method of monitoring emissions from radioactive decay, the method comprising: providing an instrument, the instrument including a plurality of detectors for detecting emissions from radioactive decay; obtaining a data set using the instrument, the data set including a record of an emission event, together with an indication of the time of the emission event and the detector which detected the emission event, the data set including a plurality of such records from the plurality of detectors; and processing the data set by: analysing at least a part of the data set according to a first set of criteria to provide a first analysed data set, the first set of criteria including a first length of time between an emission event and the start of a time period, the time period being the time period providing a count of real and accidental coincidence emission events; and analysing at least a part of the data set according to a second set of criteria to provide a second analysed data set, one or more criteria of the second set being different to the criteria of the first set, the second set of criteria being different to the criteria of the first set by providing a different length of time between an emission event and the start of the time period, the time period being the time period providing a count of real and accidental coincident emission events.