In this section, a short overview of the use and general principle of scintillation detectors is presented. Scintillation crystal parameters in relation to the application are discussed.

A scintillator is a material that converts energy lost by ionizing radiation into pulses of light. In most scintillation counting applications, the ionizing radiation is in the form of X-rays, g-rays and a- or b-particles ranging in energy from a few thousand electronvolts to several million electron volts (keVs to MeVs).