Applicability of thermoluminescent dosimeters in X-ray organ dose determination and in the dosimetry of systemic and boron neutron capture radiotherapy

The main detectors used for clinical dosimetry are ionisation chambers and semiconductors. Thermoluminescent (TL) dosimeters are also of interest because of their following advantages: (i) wide useful dose range, (ii) small physical size, (iii) no need for high voltage or cables, i.e. stand alone character, and (iv) tissue equivalence (LiF) for most radiation types. TL detectors can particularly be used for the absorbed dose measurements performed with the aim to investigate cases where dose prediction is difficult and not as part of a routine verification procedure. In this thesis, the applicability of TL detectors was studied in different clinical applications. Particularly, the major phenomena (e.g. energy dependence, sensitivity to high LET radiation, reproducibility) affecting on the precision and accuracy of TL detectors in the dose estimations were considered in this work. In organ dose determinations of diagnostic X-ray examinations, the TL detectors were found to be accurate within 5% (1 S.D.). For in viva studies using internal irradiation source, i.e. for systemic radiation therapy, a method for determining the absorbed doses to organs was introduced. The TL method developed was found to be able to estimate the absorbed doses to those critical organs near the body surface within 50%. In the mixed neutron-gamma field of boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT), TL detectors were used for gamma dose and neutron fluence measurements. They were found able to measure the neutron dose component with the accuracy of 16%, and therefore to be a useful addition to the activation foils in BNCT neutron dosimetry. The absorbed gamma doses can be measured with TL detectors within 20% in the mixed neutron-gamma field, which enables in viva measurements at BNCT beams with approximately the same accuracy. In this study, the uncertainties of TL dosimeters were found to be high but not essentially greater than those in other measurement techniques used for clinical dosimetry. Therefore, it is concluded, that the TL dosimeters are capable of determining the absorbed doses to tissue in different clinical exposure conditions. (orig.)