Absolute luminosity measurement at LHCb with beam-gas imaging

A novel technique to measure the absolute luminosity at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) using beam-gas interactions has been successfully used in the LHCb experiment. A gas injection device (SMOG) has been installed in the LHCb experiment to increase the pressure around the interaction point during dedicated fills. The Beam-Gas Imaging method (BGI) has now the potential to surpass the accuracy of the commonly used *van der Meer scan* method (VDM). The technique has been used in 10 LHC fills during 2012 including and also provided a first luminosity measurement for proton-lead collisions. This talk presents the principles of the gas injection and the improvements reached with the increased pressure. Furthermore the gas injection increased the accuracy measurement of the so-called ghost charges and also intensities per bunch. Those uncertainties are becoming the dominating factor because the uncertainty on the total beam current have been reduced.