ISOCS

[UncaBuffalo]

Has anyone used ISOCS...or a similar system?  Was it actually useful?  What kind(s) of project(s) was it being used on?  Is it user-friendly or would it be necessary to hire an expert to run it?

Thanks!

[alphadude]

yes we had a lot of experience with the system at CY. As with anything, you need a systems specialist to tweek it and get it going. 

[TWillis]

ISOCS can be very useful, but, yes, you need to have an experienced operator.  ISOCS relies on "modeling" of the object to be shot, i.e. the material, its thickness, its density, dimentions, addtional layers of shielding, etc.  The more known about the object, contents, etc., the better the results.  If little is known about the object, the results can still be useful, but the accuracy may not be what you are wanting. Its all in the modeling.

[radmoonrising]

We use it for many things like how many millicuries (mCi) are there in a waste box, why did that furnace from a clean area alarm the truck monitor (thorium bricks) and does this chemical cleanup area have Cs-137 at fallout levels or might there be site added Cs-137 there?

The system has also been used for how many mCi are in the hot spot on that pipe 20 feet overhead?  Some sites have successfully used it to replace or enhance the scan survey in a MARSSIM soil area release procedure.

A person familiar with MicroShield can probably read the manual and figure out the modeling and the factory can set up Genie 2000 for your detector.  You have to know the cabling to set it up properly though.  Collecting a simple spectrum and letting the computer analyze it for one or two isotopes can also be cut and dry and a sequence created for you by the factory.

If you are looking at low levels of multiple isotopes in soil, for instance, you'll need a gamma spectroscopy expert to verify that the software is not fibbing to you.  Many times interference peaks from the natural isotopes can be misidentified as man-made isotopes and vice versa.

[ISOCS]

I have been using ISOCS since 2002 and it's a very accurate system. It's state of the art modeling and sophisticated software is the up and coming wave of the health physics industry.

[Llama]

We were able to receive the approval to use ISOCS in leiu of the traditional hand instrument scanning. The trick was to model based on the "worst case" scenerio (i.e. all of the activity located at the edge of the field of view) hence the use of a ratio of the MDC values to be used as the offset geometry adjustment factor. The units were pretty reliable but were prone to centroid drift when there were significant temperature changes. I like them over the use of hand held data data loggers.

[UncaBuffalo]

Been stuck in training, so slow getting back, but...

Thanks for all the info in the replies & PMs!