Fundamentals of Dosimetry. Chapter 3

Determination of the energy imparted to matter by radiation is the subject of dosimetry. The energy deposited as radiation interacts with atoms of the material, as seen in the previous chapter. The imparted energy is responsible for the effects that radiation causes in matter, for instance, a rise in temperature, or chemical or physical changes in the material properties. Several of the changes produced in matter by radiation are proportional to the absorbed dose, giving rise to the possibility of using the material as the sensitive part of a dosimeter. Also, the biological effects of radiation depend on the absorbed dose. A set of quantities related to the radiation field is also defined within the scope of dosimetry. It will be shown in this chapter that, under special conditions, there are simple relations between dosimetric and field description quantities. Thus, the framework of dosimetry is the set of physical and operational quantities that are studied in this chapter