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C.6 Live, Real and Dead Times radEAGLE User Manual

A nuclide identiﬁcation is possible in radiation ﬁelds up to 200 µSv/h. Though, a valid and pre-

cise ID is only given if the limits of the EASY-MODE ID are adhered to. Here, the instrument

will clearly indicate, whether an over-range situation exists or not.

C.6 Live, Real and Dead Times

The Multi-Channel Analyzer (MCA) component of radEAGLE is an advanced electronics com-

ponent that deploys sophisticated signal processing algorithms for signal interpretation. The

MCA and electronics have a short dead-time after each pulse where no signal will be seen.

This is because the electronics cannot accept a new pulse to be processed while it is al-

ready processing a pulse. The higher the incident count rate, the higher the dead time. The

dead-time accumulates with the measurement time and is dependent on the detector load

in terms of counts per second (cps). Consequently, two acquisition times may be displayed:

the real-time, which is the true time duration of the acquisition and the live-time, which is

the acquisition time corrected by the above deﬁned dead-time. The live time will always be

shorter than or equalt to the real time.

C.7 Scaling of the Vertical Spectrum Axis

Scintillation detectors have a certain energy-dependent sensitivity. Peaks at low energies

(e.g. 59 keV of

241

Am) have a higher sensitivity than peaks at the higher end of the spectrum

(e.g. 1332 keV of

Co). When observing this type of spectra and the y-axis has a linear

scale, some peaks at higher energies might not be visible. To see a better display of the

higher energy peaks, you might want to look at the spectrum either using a logarithmic scale

or a square root scale for the y-axis. These diﬀerent scales allow the user to visually equalize

the peak heights so that a wide range of the spectra can be viewed without zooming.

ORTEC radEAGLE User Manual

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