Hand held instruments for landmine detection: View from radiation dosimetry

Hand held instruments have been proposed and widely studied for landmine detection. However, the operator is not included in these design studies. In this paper, the dose rate received by an operator of a hand held instrument for landmine detection is analyzed using a computational phantom model with Monte Carlo simulations for different source types and source-to-operator distances. The analysis is performed for bare and shielded sources in order to assess the impact of shielding on the operator dose. Additionally, the impact of having soil with varying moisture content has also been investigated. The analysis results, based on Monte Carlo simulations, showed that in addition to source properties, energy, shielding, and source-to-operator distance, the dose received by the operator also depends on soil characteristics. Furthermore, although the effective dose decreases as a function of source-to-operator distance, the absorbed and equivalent dose to some organs at radiogenic risk; e.g. the lungs, thyroid, and stomach, increases with source-to-operator distances, up to 125 cm.