Survey Meters

The survey meter is the most important resource a radiographer has to determine the presence and intensity of radiation. A review of incident and overexposure reports indicate that a majority of these type of events occurred when a technician did not have or did not use a survey meter.

There are many different models of survey meters available to measure radiation in the field. They all basically consist of a detector and a readout display. Analog and digital displays are available. Most of the survey meters used for industrial radiography use a gas filled detector.

Gas filled detectors consists of a gas filled cylinder with two electrodes. Sometimes, the cylinder itself acts as one electrode, and a needle or thin taut wire along the axis of the cylinder acts as the other electrode. A voltage is applied to the device so that the central needle or wire become an anode (+ charge) and the other electrode or cylinder wall becomes the cathode (- charge). The gas becomes ionized whenever the counter is brought near radioactive substances. The electric field created by the potential difference between the anode and cathode causes the electrons of each ion pair to move to the anode while the positively charged gas atom is drawn to the cathode. This results in an electrical signal that is amplified, correlated to exposure and displayed as a value.

Depending on the voltage applied between the anode and the cathode, the detector may be considered an ion chamber, a proportional counter, or a Geiger-Müller (GM) detector. Each of these types of detectors have their advantages and disadvantages. A brief summary of each of these detectors follows.

Ion Chamber Counter

Ion chambers have a relatively low voltage between the anode and cathode, which results in a collection of only the charges produced in the initial ionization event. This type of detector produces a weak output signal that corresponds to the number of ionization events. Higher energies and intensities of radiation will produce more ionization, which will result in a stronger output voltage.

Collection of only primary ions provides information on true radiation exposure (energy and intensity). However, the meters require sensitive electronics to amplify the signal, which makes them fairly expensive and delicate. The additional expense and required care is justified when it is necessary to make accurate radiation exposure measurements over a range of radiation energies. This might be necessary when measuring the Bremsstrahlung radiation produced by an X-ray generator. An ion chamber survey meter is sometimes used in the field when performing gamma radiography because it will provide accurate exposure measurements regardless of the radioactive isotope being used.

Proportional Counter

Proportional counter detectors use a slightly higher voltage between the anode and cathode. Due to the strong electrical field, the charges produced in the initial ionization are accelerated fast enough to ionize other electrons in the gas. The electrons produced in these secondary ion pairs, along with the primary electrons, continue to gain energy as they move towards the anode, and as they do, they produce more and more ionizations. The result is that each electron from a primary ion pair produces a cascade of ion pairs. This effect is known as gas multiplication or amplification. In this voltage regime, the number of particles liberated by secondary interactions is proportional to the number of ions produced by the passing ionizing particle. Hence, these gas ionization detectors are called proportional counters.

Like ion chamber detectors, proportional detectors discriminate between types of radiation. However, they require very stable electronics which are expensive and fragile. Proportional detectors are usually only used in a laboratory setting.

Geiger-Müller (GM) Counter

Geiger-Müller counters operate under even higher voltages between the anode and the cathode, usually in the 800 to 1200 volt range. Like the proportional counter, the high voltage accelerates the charges produced in the initial ionization to where they have enough energy to ionize other electrons in the gas. However, this cascading of ion pairs occurs to a much larger degree and continues until the counter is saturated with ions. This all happens in a fraction of a second and results in an electrical current pulse of constant voltage. The collection of the large number of secondary ions in the GM region is known as an avalanche and produces a large voltage pulse. In other words, the size of the current pulse is independent of the size of the ionization event that produced it.

The electronic circuit of a GM counters counts and records the number of pulses and the information is often displayed in counts per minute. If the instrument has a speaker, the pulses can also produce an audible click. When the volume of gas in the chamber is completely ionized, ion collection stops until the electrical pulse discharges. Again, this only takes a fraction of a second, but this process slightly limits the rate at which individual events can be detected.

Because they can display individual ionizing events, GM counters are generally more sensitive to low levels of radiation than ion chamber instruments. By means of calibration, the count rate can be displayed as the exposure rate over a specified energy range. When used for gamma radiography, GM meters are typically calibrated for the energy of the gamma radiation being used. Most often, gamma radiation from Cs-137 at 0.662 MeV provides the calibration. Only small errors occur when the radiographer uses Ir-192 (average energy about 0.34 MeV) or Co-60 (average energy about 1.25 MeV).

Since the Geiger-Müller counter produces many more electrons than a ion chamber counter or a proportional counter, it does not require the same level of electronic sophistication as other survey meters. This results in a meter that is relatively low cost and rugged. The disadvantages of GM survey meters are the lack of ability to account for different amounts of ionization caused by different energy photons and noncontinuous measurement (need to discharge).

Comparison of Gas Filled Detectors

The graph to the right shows the relationship of ion collection in a gas filled detector versus the applied voltage. In the ion chamber region, the voltage between the anode and cathode is relatively low and only primary ions are collected. In the proportional region ,the voltage is higher, and primary ions and a number of secondary ions (proportional to the primary ions originally formed) are collected. In the GM region, a maximum number of secondary ions are collected when the gas around the anode is completely ionized. Note that discrimination between kinds of radiation (E₁ and E₂) is possible in the ion chamber and proportional regions. Radiation at different energy levels forms different numbers of primary ions in the detector. However in the GM region, the number of secondary ions collected per event remains the same no matter what the energy of the radiation that initiated the event. The GM counter gives up the ability to accurately measure the exposure due to different energies of radiation in exchange for a large signal pulse. This large signal pulse simplifies the electronics that are necessary for instruments such as survey meters.