Electron energy loss in liquid water

The indirect effects of ionizing radiation is a major side effect in radiotherapy. The knowledge of the amount of energy deposited by electrons in the tissues is important to assure the right dose to be delivered to a patient. The lack of experimental data on the energy loss of electrons in water, with energies in the same range of the secondary electrons emitted in the interaction of radiation with tissues, renders difficult the evaluation of the real total dose released to the patient. In this work we present a method to obtain the electron energy loss from the measured fragmentation cross section of water by electron impact.