[en] Variations in the physical properties of beams of radiation used for therapy can produce corresponding variations in the patient responses for the same physical dose. These variations have been particularly significant in the application of heavy-charged-particle beams to the clinic. A dedicated system has been designed and constructed, in order to establish a systematic method for the intercomparison of the microdosimetric properties of the various beams being used in clinical trials. (orig.)

[en] After a short review of the achievements of the Microdosimetric d(z) Model in describing and predicting the response of luminescent detectors for different exposure conditions, recent comments and suggestions are systematically addressed also in light of more recent findings. (authors)

[en] The generalization of the correlations between the moments of the absorbed specific energy and dose of irradiation is given for the case of a twice stochastic Poisson process of particles hitting a target. The degree of these correlation modification is shown to be determined by the value of the correlation time of fluctuations of the irradiation intensity and by the dispersion of fluctuations. (author)

[en] A brief description is provided of the annual progress (with problems encountered) in the microdosimetry program for highly energetic heavy ions produced at the BEVALAC. (DT)

[en] According to experience and results of neutron radiotherapy in various radiotherapy centres, depth dose precision demands and neutron interactions with elemental tissue constituents, are the reasons presented in this paper, why neutron beams should not be used in radiotherapy. (author)

[en] The object of this note is to describe the application of microdosimetric methods to the investigation of the radiation quality of the neutron field at the Gray Laboratory facility, Mount Vernon Hospital. (author)

[en] Recent successful microdosimetric calculations of heavy charged particle efficiencies are evaluated with suggestion for future research. (authors)

[en] Maximum entropy and Bayesian methods are applied to an inversion problem which consists of unfolding diffusion from proximity functions calculated from cloud-chamber data. The solution appears to be relatively insensitive to statistical errors in the data (an important feature) given the limited number of tracks normally available from cloud-chamber measurements. It is the first time, to our knowledge, that such methods are applied to microdosimetry. (author)

[en] Radiation quality can be described by macrodosimetric quantities LET and absorbed dose. LET and absorbed dose are volume average quantity and does not consider random nature of energy loss along the track. LET cannot express energy deposition in a small volume where average number of interactions is of the order of one or less. Radiations which differ in the number of energy deposits, their magnitude and spatial distribution may cause different effects for the same absorbed dose. All these drawbacks are taken care in microdosimetry

[en] Two types of bubble detector were studied: the Bubble Damage Neutron Detector (BDND) and the Superheated Drop Detector (SDD). The detectors were tested in neutron beams and fields. The relative response of the detectors varied with the average neutron energy. The response of SDD 100 started to decrease at higher energies than for BDND's, at 100 keV it was only about 1/4 of the response to AmBe neutrons. The responses of SDD 1000 and SDD 6000 decreased with the average neutron energy in a rather similar way. Starting from the AmLi source they represented less than 0.1 of the response to AmBe neutrons. Their response to high energy neutrons was practically the same as to AmBe neutrons. This is important for individual air crew dosimetry on board aircraft. (M.D.)