The measuring of the absorbed dose in human tissue that underwent irradiation with ionizing radiation

Ionizing radiations are radiations of atomic origin (X) or nuclear origin (α, β, γ). They are composed of either subatomic particles (α, β) or electromagnetic waves (X, γ) which possess enough energy to remove electrons from the atoms and molecules of the medium with which particles interact. They thus generate ionizing processes. The effects that are produced by the interaction of the ionizing radiations with a particular medium (which could be human tissue) have different intensities depending on the nature of the incident radiations, on the rate in which these radiations release energy to the medium and on the total amount of energy released to the medium. For this reason, the energy released by a particular type of ionizing radiations to a particular type of medium has become of great interest both for researchers and for specialists who deal with using ionizing radiations in different fields, such as the biomedical one. The aim of the present paper is to briefly present some of the aspects connected to the way certain quantities are defined, quantities which are specific to the interaction of ionizing particles with the medium they pass through and which are also connected to the energy released in the medium. The paper also describes methods of measuring these quantities.