Characterization of beta radiation fields using radiochromic films

The objective of this work was to study the response of radiochromic films for beta radiation fields in terms of absorbed dose. The reliability of the EBT model Gafchromic radiochromic film was studied. A 9800 XL model Microtek, transmission scanner, a 369 model X-Rite optical densitometer and a Mini 1240 Shimadzu UV spectrophotometer were used for measurement comparisons. Calibration of the three systems was done with irradiated samples of radiochromic films with 0.1; 0.3; 0.5; 0.8; 1.0; 1.5; 2.0; 2.5; 3.0; 3.5; 4.5 e 5.0 Gy in beta radiation field from a Sr-90/Y-90 source. Calibration was performed by establishing a correlation between the absorbed dose values and the corresponding radiochromic responses. Results showed significant differences in the absorbed dose values obtained with the three methods. Absorbed dose values showed errors from 0.6 to 4.4%, 0.3 to 31.8% and 0.2 to 47.3% for the Microtek scanner, the X-Rite Densitometer and the Shimadzu spectrophotometer, respectively. Due to the easy acquisition and use for absorbed dose measurements, the densitometer and the spectrophotometer showed to be suitable techniques to evaluate radiation dose in relatively homogeneous fields. In the case of inhomogeneous fields or for a two dimension mapping of radiation fields to identify anisotropies, the scanner technique is the most recommended. (author)