1 De part ment of En ergy, In for ma tion En gi neer ing and Math e mat i cal Mod els, Uni ver sity of Palermo, Palermo, It aly 2 De part ment of In for ma tics, Mod el ing, Elec tron ics and Sys tem En gi neer ing, Uni ver sity of Calabria, Rende, It aly Sci en tific pa per Tech no log i cally-en hanced elec tronic im age sen sors are used in var i ous fields as di ag nos tic tech niques in med i cine or space ap pli ca tions. In the lat ter case the de vices can be ex posed to in tense ra di

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... tion fluxes over time which may im pair the func tion ing of the same equip ment. In this pa per we re port the re sults of gamma-ray ir ra di a tion tests on CMOS im age sen sors sim u lat ing the space ra di a tion over a long time pe riod. Gamma-ray ir ra di a tion tests were car ried out by means of IGS-3 gamma ir ra di a tion fa cil ity of Palermo Uni ver sity, based on 60 Co sources with dif fer ent ac tiv i ties. To re duce the dose rate and re al ize a nar row gamma-ray beam, a lead-collimation sys tem was pur posely built. It permits to have dose rate val ues less than 10 mGy/s and to ir ra di ate CMOS Im age Sen sors dur ing op er a tion. The to tal ion iz ing dose to CMOS im age sen sors was mon i tored in-situ, dur ing irra di a tion, up to 1000 Gy and im ages were ac quired ev ery 25 Gy. At the end of the tests, the sen sors con tin ued to op er ate de spite a back ground noise and some pix els were com pletely sat u rated. These ef fects, how ever, in volve iso lated pix els and therefore, should not af fect the im age qual ity. Key words: im ag ing tech nique, CMOS im age sen sor, gamma ir ra di a tion