Thermoluminescent dosemeters (TLD) exposed to high fluxes of gamma radiation, thermal neutrons and protons

Thermoluminescent dosemeters (TLD), widely experimented and utilized in personal dosimetry, have some advantageous characteristics which induce one to employ them also in radiotherapy. The new radiotherapy techniques are aimed at selectively depositing a high dose in cancerous tissues. This goal is reached by utilising both conventional and other more recently proposed radiation, such as thermal neutrons and heavy charged particles. In these inhomogeneous radiation fields a reliable mapping of the spatial distribution of absorbed dose is desirable, and the utilized dosemeters have to give such a possibility without notably perturbing the radiation field with the materials of the dosemeters themselves. TLDs, for their small dimension and their tissue equivalence for most radiation, give good support in the mapping of radiation fields. After exposure to the high fluxes of therapeutic beams, some commercial TL dosemeters have shown a loss of reliability. An investigation has therefore be performed, both on commercial and on laboratory made phosphors, in order to investigate their behaviour in such radiation fields. In particular the thermal neutron and gamma ray mixed field of the thermal column of a nuclear reactor, of interest for Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (B.N.C.T.) and a proton beam, of interest for proton therapy, were considered. Here some results obtained with new TL phosphors exposed in such radiation fields are presented, after a short description of some radiation damage effect on commercial LiF TLDs exposed in the (nth,γ) field of the thermal column of a reactor. (author)