Deadtime calibration in high-rate microstrip gas counters

The advent of the microstrip gas chamber (MSGC) has permitted the development of position-sensitive gas avalanche detectors, which combine sub-millimeter spatial resolution with multi-MHz global rate capabilities not attainable with traditional types of gas counters. Based on massively parallel electronic readout, the need to keep down electronic channel costs imposes a simple front-end design without in-built deadtime compensation. In this report we show that insitu calibration of the deadtime of the detector system is straight-forward and reliable. Methods are described for applications to X-ray and neutron detection.