Thermoluminescent (Tl) dosimetry of slow-neutron fields at radiotherapy dose level

The dosimetry for radiotherapy involving neutrons is very complicated, owing to the complexity of secondary radiation components, whose contributions to the total absorbed dose have to be discriminated, owing to the different radiobiological effects. In order to separate thermal neutrons and photons, LiF dosimeters are mostly utilized. containing different percentage of Li, like as TLD-700, TLD-100 and TLD-600, but many problems arise. In the response of TLD-700 exposed to neutron-gamma mixed fields with high neutron flux, the contribution of thermal neutrons to the Tl emission is high. Moreover. TLD-100 and TLD-600 may undergo radiation damage, and great care has to be taken in order to obtain reliable results. Other TLDs showing lower sensitivity to neutrons are proposed and experimented for such high-flux neutron fields. The faced problems and various proposed solutions are here described. (Author)