Application of Bayesian statistics for radiation dose assessment in mixed beta-gamma fields

Abstract

The present paper proposes a novel method, based on Bayesian statistics, as a new approach in the field of thermoluminescence dosimetry for the assessment of personal doses in mixed beta-gamma radiation fields. The method can be utilized in situations when the classical way of dose calculation is insufficient or impossible. The proposed method uses a prior function which can be assigned to the unknown parameter and the likelihood function obtained from an experiment, which together can be transformed into the posterior probability distribution of the sought parameter. Finally, the distribution is converted to the value of the dose. The proposed method is supported by analytical and Monte Carlo calculations, which confirmed the results obtained through the Bayesian approach.