NE-507 Radiological Engineering

Class Lecture # 3&4

Radiation Dosimetry

Dr. M. Sohail
02-07-2021 (Summer Semester)
Department of Nuclear Engineering
Email: msohail@pieas.edu.pk

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Units
X- and Gamma Radiation

 The absorbed dose depends

o on the type and energy of the radiation
o the depth and elementary constitution of the absorbing
medium at this point
 Bone, absorbs more energy from an X-ray beam per
unit mass of absorber than soft tissue
 For X-ray fields “amount of energy transferred from
the X-ray field to a unit mass of air” is considered

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Units cont’d..
 Measurement of ionization in air becomes difficult at
energies less than several kilo electron volts and more
than several mega electron volts

 Therefore limited to X- or gamma rays whose quantum

energies do not exceed 3 MeV

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Units cont’d..
X- and Gamma Radiation

 Exposure Unit

 “Quantity of X or gamma radiation that produces, in

air, ions carrying one coulomb of charge (of either sign)
per kilogram of air”

1X unit = 1 C/kg air

No special name “used as X”

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Units cont’d..
X- and Gamma Radiation

 Exposure unit and dose

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Units cont’d..
X- and Gamma Radiation

 Roentgen

 Formerly, before the SI system was introduced

 “Quantity of X-or gamma radiation that produces ions

carrying one statcoulomb (sC) or esu of charge of per
cubic centimeter of dry air at 0◦C and 760 mm Hg”

1R = 1 sC/cm3 , where 1 C = 3 × 109sC

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Units cont’d..
Relationship b/w R and rad

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Units cont’d..
Relationship X-unit and R

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Exposure-Dose Relationship
 Energy absorption is approximately proportional to the
electronic density of the absorber

 Muscle tissue has electronic density of 3.28 ×1023e/g

 Electronic density in air is 3.01×1023e/g

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Exposure-Dose Relationship cont’d..

 1 R corresponds to 87.7 ergs/g of air and absorption of
95 ergs/g muscle tissue

 Tissue dose from a 1-R exposure is very close to the

tissue dose of 100 ergs/g or 1 rad

 The unit “roentgen”is loosely (but incorrectly) used to

mean “rad”

 1 R is now often called a dose of 1 centigray (cGy)

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Exposure-Dose Relationship
Example 6.4

 Consider a γ-ray beam of energy 0.3 MeV. If the photon

flux is 103 quanta/cm2-s and the air temperature is
20◦C, what is the exposure rate at a point in this beam
and what is the absorbed dose rate for soft tissue at
this point?

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Exposure-Dose Relationship cont’d..

Solution

 The linear energy absorption coefficient for air, μa, at

STP, for 300-keV photons is found to be 3.46 × 10−5
cm−1

 The exposure rate, Ẋ, in C/kg/s in a photon flux φ is

given by

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Exposure-Dose Relationship cont’d..

Solution

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Exposure-Dose Relationship cont’d..

 The radiation absorbed dose rate from this exposure is

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