Computational removal of lanthanum–cerium bromide self-activity

It has been reported that detectors made of lanthanum–cerium halides, such as LaBr3(Ce) and CeBr3 have superior energy resolution for gamma-radiation detection compared to that offered by conventional sodium iodide [NaI(T1)] detectors. However, it has also been observed that the lanthanum–cerium halides contain certain amount of self-activity caused by the radioactive isotope 138La. Additionally, LaBr3(Ce) and CeBr3 crystals have also been reported to be affected by β-contamination in the low-energy and α-contamination in the high-energy regions. This paper presents a computational approach to reduce self-activity and contamination for LaBr3(Ce) and CeBr3 detectors using a third reference NaI(T1) detector. This procedure can be implemented as an automatic self-calibration module for gamma-radiation detectors made of LaBr3(Ce) and/or CeBr3 crystals.