ANN-Based Prediction of OSL Decay Curves in Quartz from Turkish Mediterranean Beach Sand

Quartz is a widely used mineral in dosimetric and geochronological applications due to its stable luminescence properties under ionizing radiation. This study presents an artificial neural network (ANN)-based approach to predict the optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) decay curves of quartz extracted from Mediterranean beach sand samples in Turkey. Experimental OSL signals were obtained from quartz samples irradiated with beta doses ranging from 0.1 Gy to 1034.9 Gy. The dataset was used to train ANN models with three different learning algorithms: Levenberg–Marquardt (LM), Bayesian Regularization (BR), and Scaled Conjugate Gradient (SCG). Forty-seven decay curves were used for training and three for testing. The ANN models were evaluated based on regression accuracy, training–validation–test performance, and their predictive capability for low, medium, and high doses (1 Gy, 72.4 Gy, 465.7 Gy). The results showed that BR achieved the highest overall regression (R = 0.99994) followed by LM (R = 0.99964) and SCG (R = 0.99820), confirming the superior generalization and fits across all dose ranges. LM performs optimally at low-to-moderate doses, and SCG delivers balanced yet slightly noisier predictions. The proposed ANN-based method offers a robust and effective alternative to conventional kinetic modeling approaches for analyzing OSL decay behavior and holds considerable potential for advancing luminescence-based retrospective dosimetry and OSL dating applications.