Quality assurance of automated gamma-ray spectrometric analysis

Fully automatic gamma-ray spectrometric analysis procedures perform complete processing of the spectrum without intervention of the operator. In order to maintain the reliability of the final results the analysis checks the intermediate results automatically. When a disagreement is identified by such a check the uncertainty of the intermediate results is increased in order to accommodate the disagreement. The increased uncertainty is propagated into the uncertainty of the final results in order to take into account the disagreement. This approach was implemented in Canberra's Genie ESP gamma-ray spectrometry package for examining the results of the peak analysis. In addition to this intermediate check also a-posteriori checks of the final results can be performed by statistical analysis. Such analysis shows whether the results are under statistical control and can discover sources of variability which are not taken into account in the uncertainty budget.