Characterization and analysis of NaI(Tl) and BGO detectors

There have been many studies concerning the performance characteristics of NaI(Tl) and BGO scintillating crystals, most of which generate data by algorithms rather than from experimentation. Those studies which do deal with collected data, however, usually test only a few detecting units. It was, therefore, the purpose of this project to develop a characterization method and to characterize a large number of scintillators of various sizes and histories as well as to create a performance profile based on the data collected. The energy ranges at which the detectors show relatively good resolution % and photo peak efficiency was also desired for future reference. Enough statistical data was collected and analyzed so that a differentiation between those detectors which perform well and those that do not can be made