Physics and dosimetry aspects of synchrotron radiation sources

Today there is a growing need in the use of accelerators for various applications in the field of medicine, industry, defense, environmental sciences, food processing and in basic and applied research. Electron accelerators are widely used nowadays in the field of diagnosis, therapy, radiography, basic research, production of synchrotron radiation etc. For applications in medicine, industry and food processing, the energy of the accelerated electrons is usually less than about 10 MeV whereas it may extend to several TeV for research applications. Most of the high energy accelerators use radio-frequency for the acceleration and hence the particle beam is bunched or pulsed. The increase in the use of such machines with higher accelerated energy and pulsed in nature raises several safety issues