Suppression ofK-Induced background in gamma-ray spectrometry for food radioactivity analysis: A Monte Carlo study.

Source: PubMed, NCBI / U.S. National Library of Medicine

Improving the sensitivity of gamma-ray spectrometry is crucial for food safety monitoring. However, naturally abundantK in these foods generates significant continuous spectrum background that severely interferes with the detection of other key environmental radionuclides. This study conducted Monte Carlo simulations in Geant4 to systematically quantify the interference mechanism ofK in gamma-ray energy spectrum measurements. Simulations indicate that the continuous spectrum of bremsstrahlung radiation emitted byK beta particles is the primary source of interference, leading to a significant increase in the background level. The optimized sample container structure proposed in this study reduces theK background in the target energy region (e.g., thePb region) by approximately 57%, improving the detection sensitivity with a 17% reduction in the relative minimum detectable activity.