Radiation Measurements 71 (2014) 183e186

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Radiation Measurements
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/radmeas

A performance comparison of Thermo Fisher EPD-MK2 and TLD

(LiF:Mg,Cu,P) as part of accreditation proficiency testing
L.A. Benevides a, *, R.K. Piper b, A. Romanyukha c
a
Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, 7700 Arlington Avenue, Falls Church, VA 22042, USA
b
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Boulevard, Richland, WA 99352, USA
c
Naval Dosimetry Center, 8901 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20889, USA

h i g h l i g h t s

Compare and contrast proficiency testing of EPD-Mk2 and LiF:Mg,Cu,P.

M150 beam code showed 30% bias for EPD-Mk2.

LiF:Mg,Cu, P showed a significant under response in Beta-low energy category.

EPD-Mk2 showed a greater BIAS in all categories when compared to LiF:Mg, Cu, P.

EPD-Mk2 and LiF:Mg,Cu,P systems passed the proficiency testing.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this study we compared the proficiency testing performance of the Thermo Fisher active electronic
Received 3 December 2013 personal dosimeter (EPD-Mk2) to the passive Thermoluminescent (TLD) dosimetry (LiF:Mg, Cu, P) in four
Received in revised form testing categories as part of proficiency testing. One hundred and thirty two EPDs and comparable
18 March 2014
number of TLDs were submitted to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and were subsequently
Accepted 25 March 2014
Available online 3 April 2014
irradiated with four categories of radiations in accordance with ANSI HPS 13.11-2009 criteria. The TLD
performance was significantly better than EPDs in all categories. In addition, the EPD-Mk2 under
responded in the accident category for M150 X-ray beam primarily due to the dose rate. The EPD-Mk2
Keywords:
Proficiency
was unable to respond to the exposure rate increase associated with accident category. The study
EPD-MK2 showed that while the performance of EPD-Mk2 has improved to the point of passing ANSI HPS 13.11-
TLD 2009, it requires that the user has a significant knowledge of the exposure scenario and radiation field.
Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction
Today, active personnel dosimeters (APD) have many advan-
tages over their passive counterparts chief among them is the
ability to immediately assess personnel doses and exposures. This
primary advantage allows immediately feedback to address work
practices or habits that directly contribute to individual exposures
to occupational workers. Historically in the United States (US),
APDs have been primarily utilized in the industrial and medical
operational settings to evaluate occupational personnel working in
industrial radiography, and interventional radiology and cardiology
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 301 295 6537.
E-mail addresses: Benevidesl@aol.com, Luis.A.Benevides.mil@health.mil
(L.A. Benevides).
with a potential for high exposures. Elsewhere in the world the
story remains much the same with limited use of APDs for
recording the official occupational doses of individuals; such as in
the United Kingdom, (Ginjaume, 2011).
To achieve the same popularity (rate) of usage as the passive
dosimetry requires that the active dosimeters be reliable, accurate,
precise and cost effective in measuring occupational exposures.
One United States (US) globally accepted method to demonstrate
performance is the Department of Commerce, National Institutes of
Standards and Technology (NIST) National Voluntary Accreditation
Program (NVLAP) accreditation proficiency testing program which
utilizes the ISO/IEC 17025 and ANSI HPS Standard N13.11-2009 as
guidelines for the testing standard. While ANSI 13.11-2009 allows
the use of APDs that have passed the appropriate proficiency
testing; only two accredited programs currently use them in the US.
The US Navy (Navy) has undertaken the challenge to provide the

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.radmeas.2014.03.019
1350-4487/Published by Elsevier Ltd.
184 L.A. Benevides et al. / Radiation Measurements 71 (2014) 183e186
regulators and industry with the sufficient documentation to
demonstrate that APDs could be solely used in specific scenarios for
an official legal dose of record.
The Navy has used the DT-702/PD dosimetric system since the
early 2000s as its primary passive dosimeter, the device employs
the LiF:Mg,Cu,P thermoluminescence cards (TLD’s) and the
Thermo-Electron (Harshaw) model 8800 dosimeter readers,
developed and produced by Thermo Fisher Scientific. The dosim-
eter cards consists of four LiF:Mg,Cu,P elements, enveloped and
suspended in four round openings by Teflon on an aluminum
substrate card which is used in a plastic dosimeter holder. The
dosimeter holder contains a unique filter for each chip, e.g. copper,
acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, Mylar and tin. The filters, makes it
possible for a Navy algorithm to determine shallow photon, deep
photon, and neutron dose equivalents. The Navy TLD-based dosi-
metric system is NVLAP accredited and is used for dose of record of
Hp(10), Hp(3), and Hp(0.07) doses, Cassata et al., 2002.
The Navy started using the Thermo-Scientific EPD-Mk2 as its
operational dose rate meter in 2006 primarily as a replacement for
the antiquated direct reading dosimeters in various industrial set-
tings. The EPD-Mk2 contains three active silicon diode detectors.
Each detector feeds a chain of dedicated amplifiers and counting
circuits to measure quantify soft gamma, hard gamma and beta
radiations. The energy compensated filtered diode output from
each detector chain is processed through an algorithm to record,
calculate and display deep (Hp(10)) and shallow (Hp(0.07)) dose
equivalent and associated dose rates. There is an option to set up
sound and light alarm in case of EPD detection of high dose rate.
Unlike DT-702/PD, EPD-Mk2 does not have the capability to mea-
sure neutron dose.
Being an accredited NVLAP laboratory, every two years, the
Naval Dosimetry Center (NDC) performs a proficiency testing to
maintain its accreditation. In 2007, NDC started evaluating an EPD-
Mk2 for occupational doses. The prospective occupational workers
that would significantly benefit from utilizing the advantages of the
APD were identified to be the interventional radiologists and car-
diologists. These two groups of occupational workers historically
have had the highest occupational exposures of the Navy in recent
times. The expectation of using APDs to monitor these workers will
likely reduce their doses because APDs will alert the worker when
dose rate exceeds certain limit improving by this their work habits.
While the APDs have had nominal success in specific occupa-
tions, recent papers have indicated that active dosimeters have
marked response decrements when confronted with high dose
rates and/or pulsed fields (Ankerhold et al., 2009; Clairand et al.,
2011; Zutz et al., 2012). Zutz et al. suggested that essential pa-
rameters to be known about the active dosimeter were maximum
measurable dose rate in a pulse, dead time of the counting
dosimeter, and measurement cycle time which are not being
currently addressed in standards, (Zutz et al., 2012).
In Clairand et al., the Thermo Scientific EPD Mk2.3 showed an
under response from 20 to 90% for increasing dose rate from 0 to
60 Sv/h with a constant pulse frequency of 10 cycles/s in laboratory
and clinical settings, (Clairand et al., 2011). The focus of this study
was to compare the performance of the Navy’s passive (LiF:Mg,-
Cu,P) and active (EPD-Mk2) dosimeters in four NVLAP categories
proficiency testing to evaluate the active dosimeter against the
existing passive dosimeter to eventually determine the applica-
bility of APDs in an occupational environment as the official indi-
vidual dosimeter.
2. Material and methods
In 2011 and again in 2013, two sets of passive and active do-
simeters were evaluated in the NDC-NVLAP proficiency testing
process within ANSI N13.11 Categories IA (15 dosimeters each), IIA
(21 dosimeters each), IIIA (15 dosimeters each) and IVAA (15 do-
simeters each). In each of the three proficiency testing rounds,
three sets of five and one set of seven APDs and passive dosimeters
were submitted to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL),
as the proficiency testing provider for NVLAP accredited labora-
tories, to be irradiated in the blind. Background was taken in to
account by adding control TLDs and control APDs to the PNNL
submission. PNNL irradiations were conducted in accordance with
ISO/IEC 17025 and ANSI/HPS N13.11-2009 standards using photons,
beta particles and standardized mixtures of these radiations.
For isotope sources, PNNL reports the exposure rate and the
irradiation time in support of the reported dose equivalent values.
For X-ray spectra, PNNL instead reports the integrated charge
(Coulomb) collected on the beam monitor chamber and the asso-
ciated calibration coefficient (Roentgen per Coulomb) of the
chamber for the particular spectra used. As such, exposure rate
information is unavailable to the participant. As a result of this
article, PNNL is considering providing additional exposure (or air
kerma) rate information related to the individual irradiations in
order to facilitate the dosimetry provider’s evaluation of the per-
formance of their dosimetry during the test periods. Alternatively,
PNNL is considering requesting test participants provide limiting
exposure or dose equivalent rates for the evaluations of APDs. Such
special considerations may provide a gap solution highly variable
exposure rates used in APD evaluations until such time as the needs
for APD testing can be included within the formal guidance for
performance testing (i.e., ANSI/HPS N13.11 or other suitable per-
formance testing standard).
For this article, PNNL provided an estimate of the exposure rate
for X-ray irradiations during 2011 and 2013 proficiency tests
referenced. For accident level testing, most irradiations were per-
formed using a beam current of 15 milli-amperes (mA), which
produces a dose equivalent (Hp(10)) rate of about 7.9 Sv/h at the
reference distance of 100 cm. For tests in the protection level cat-
egories (II and IV) involving M150 and other X-ray spectra, beam
currents may range from 0.1 mA to 22 mA, but are generally kept
just high enough to produce the targeted Hp(10) level in no less
than 30 s. A survey of the X-ray irradiations making up part of or the
entire irradiation ranged from 36 mSv/h to 1.9 Sv/h and only 5 of
the 42 protection level X-ray irradiations were performed using a
field that exceed 1 Sv/h. The dose equivalent rates for isotope-
generated radiation fields are based on associated decayed values
on the dates(s) of irradiation. Table 1 reflects the results of the
conversations with PNNL to provide approximated values for the
irradiation ranges. As is required by the proficiency protocols, the
delivered doses were not reported to the NDC in order to evaluate
the laboratory proficiency in independently determining the
delivered doses in the separate testing categories. At the end of the
three cycles, NDC provided the evaluated dose back to PNNL. PNNL
in turn calculated the bias and standard deviation of the results
when compared to the delivered doses. In total during proficiency
testing NDC reported to the PNNL the doses of 132 dosimeters of
each type (TLD and APD).
3. Results and discussion
Both dosimetric systems passed the criteria set forth in ANSI
HPS 13.11-2009. However, the APD trend was an over response
whereas the TLD trend was an under response with the exceptions
seen in category IA for ADP and category IVAA for TLD as seen in
Figs. 1 and 2. The under and over responses are of dosimetric sig-
nificance when assigning occupational doses to individuals. With
one exception (shallow dose for photon/beta mixtures), TLDs per-
formed significantly better than APDs. The TLD significant under
 L.A. Benevides et al. / Radiation Measurements 71 (2014) 183e186 185

Table 1
ANSI HPS Standard N13.11-2009 proficiency categories with associated irradiation parameters used in performance periods. The information provided in this table was taken
from the standard, reported irradiations and dose rates based on direct conversations with PNNL post-performance period. Values reported in the dose rate column are dose to
tissue for beta fields and air-kerma for photon fields.

Category Name Energy bin Angle Distance (cm) Dose eq. rate (Sv/h) Irradiation ranges

IA Photon Accidents, General  ¼ 662 keV)

Cs-137 (E 0 
100 0.160 0.050e2.80 Gy
M150 (E ¼ 73 keV) 100 7.90
  
IIA Photon/Photon Mixtures, General 20 keV; ┴ if  70 keV 0 , 40 , 60 100 0.040e1.980 0.77e48.35 mSv
Cs-137 100,300 0.015e0.160
IIIA Betas, General Sr-90/Y-90 0 35 0.095e0.098 3.47e201.20 mSv
Kr-85 30 0.069e0.076
IVAA General Photons þ General Betas, 20 keV; ┴ if  70 keV 0 100 0.040e1.90 0.78e37.20 mSv
(IIA þ IIIA) Sr-90/Y-90; 35 0.082e0.087
Kr-85 30 0.066e0.060
Cs-137 100,300 0.015e0.160
Am-241 50 0.002

high energy betas, which turns out to be more consistent with

Fig. 1. Average bias of the TLD and EPD performance.
response for category IVAA shallow dose was directly attributed to
Kr-85 response which was adopted in proficiency testing with the
publication of ANSI HPS 13.11-2009. NDC determined that the TLD
and the associated dose algorithm were not designed nor calibrated
for such low-energy betas. As a result of these findings, NDC has
changed their accreditation to category IVAB, general photons and
Fig. 2. Performance Quotient for TLD and EPD in reference to the NVLAP limits.
occupational worker environments.
While the EPD-Mk2 passed the accident category primarily due
to the Cs-137 performance, the performance of the APDs in M150
showed a significant under response. Unlike the case of the TLD,
industrial occupational workers require the monitoring provided
by this category for industrial radiography and other high dose rate
environments. One can surmise from the aggregate data in all
categories except IA that the EPD performance in all other fields
with a variety of dose rates was comparable to the TLD performance
as long as the dose rate was kept low. The disparity in response is
made clear when one looks at the dose rate of M150 of 7.9 Sv/h
compared to 0.16 Sv/h for Cs-137 as noted in Table 1. The M150
under response is likely related to the dose rate dependence pre-
viously described by Clairand et al. and in Eurados, 2007.
The general over response of the APD is likely caused by the
algorithm calibration using low dose rate Cs-137 compromise for
the significant under response for M150 at high dose rate in the
accident dose range. While the under response of the silicon-based
APDs to high dose rate environments is well understood it has not
been adequately addressed in the current testing standards. How-
ever based on current testing standards, the EPD-Mk2 from Thermo
Scientific passed the categories tested, but the end-users need to
understand the radiation fields to properly utilize this type of de-
vice for a dose of record. EPD.
4. Conclusions
In general, the authors recommend that the performance
criteria described in Zutz.et al. be incorporated into the appropriate
ANSI 13.27, 42.17a, 42.17c, and 42.20 as appropriate to provide the
users with a measure of assurance that the manufactures have
taken into account the performance effects of dose rate and pulsed
fields. In addition, ANSI 13.11 should have a requirement for dose
rates and a process in which a failure could occur if a dosimeter is
biased for any specific energy band within the proficiency testing
category. These resulting changes would avoid APDs that perform
excellent at low dose rates of Cs-137 and are poor performers at X-
ray high dose rates independent of energy response. Under this
scenario, we would have expected that the EPD-MK2 would have
failed Category IA-accident range and the TLD would have failed the
Category IVAA-general photons/betas. It would be ideal if the active
electronic dosimeters also had the capability to alarm based on the
rate of dose rate increase prior to reaching a designated threshold,
thus enabling a user to understand that they are approaching fields
with significant exposure potential. An alternative approach to deal
with the dose rate under response would be to design the elec-
tronic personal dosimeter with an accident range diode that would
186 L.A. Benevides et al. / Radiation Measurements 71 (2014) 183e186
alarm if the radiation field exceeded 1 Sv/h. It is the opinion of the
authors that the future of occupational exposure dosimetry is in
electronic active dosimetry. As active dosimetry proficiency per-
formance improves, the only remaining impediment will be the
unit cost. However, as with using any operational dosimetry the
authors would caution that the end user needs to have a clear
understanding of the radiation fields that the wearer will be
engaging with to ensure the proper documentation of occupational
exposures.
Disclaimer
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and
do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the
Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, the US Govern-
ment or Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
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