Basic Physics of Nuclear Medicine/Print version

Introduction

This is the seventh chapter of a Wikibook entitled Basics Physics of Nuclear Medicine.

We have learned in the last two chapters about how radiation interacts with matter and we are now in a position to apply our understanding to the detection of radiation.

One of the major outcomes of the interaction of radiation with matter is the creation of ions as we saw in Chapter 5. This outcome is exploited in gas-filled detectors as you will see in this chapter. The detector in this case is essentially a gas, in that it is the atoms of a gas which are ionised by the radiation. We will see in the next chapter that solids can also be used as radiation detectors but for now we will deal with gases and be introduced to detectors such as the Ionization Chamber and the Geiger Counter.

Before considering these specific types of gas-filled detectors we will first of all consider the situation from a very general perspective.