AN INTERCOMPARISON OF SOFTWARE FOR PROCESSING GE GAMMA-RAY SPECTRA

An intercomparison of software for the analysis of gamma-ray spectra f rom Ge detectors was carried out by testing the quality of calculated areas and associated uncertainties of well-isolated single peaks from IAEA test spectra. The results of the intercomparison show that the qu ality of results from gamma-spectrometric analyses of radionuclides pr oviding well-isolated single peaks (e.g. Cs-137) vary significantly be tween software packages. The results furthermore indicate significant effects on the quality from the user of the software. The intercompari son comprised tests of precision and accuracy, and permitted a ranking of the results according to accuracy. Fifteen sets of data were submi tted for the intercomparison involving ten software packages. Only fou r of the 15 data sets showed both acceptable precision and accuracy, a nd the accuracies of the other data sets were tested against the resul ts of one of these sets to provide a ranking between the data sets. Se ven data sets show high accuracy, five data sets show average accuracy and three data sets show low accuracy. Generally, the data sets based on sophisticated methods for calculating peak areas (e.g. peak fittin g) do not show higher accuracy than those based on more simple methods . (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.