A new approach to automatic radiation spectrum analysis

The application of adaptive methods to the solution of the automatic radioisotope identification problem using the energy spectrum is described. The identification is carried out by means of neural networks, which allow the use of relatively reduced computational structures, while keeping high pattern recognition capability. In this context, it has been found that one of these simple structures, once adequately trained, is quite suitable to identify a given isotope present in a mixture of elements as well as the relative proportions of each identified substance. Preliminary results are presented, and are deemed good enough to consider these adaptive structures as powerful and simple tools in the automatic spectrum analysis