Uncertainties in alanine/ESR dosimetry at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt

In radiation therapy, the effect of ionizing radiation is quantified in terms of the absorbed dose to water. Dosimetry with alanine and readout via electron spin resonance (ESR) is a method which is used as a secondary standard by several national metrology institutions. The advantages of the method are the good water-equivalence of the probes, their small size and the very weak dependence of the response on the radiation quality for MV x-rays and high-energy electrons used in radiation therapy. For radiation therapy, a small uncertainty of the applied dose is required. The present publication describes the determination of the uncertainty budget for the alanine/ESR dosimetry system of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), which relies on the use of a reference sample. A method is also presented which allows a reduction of the influence of fading or other changes of the ESR amplitude of irradiated alanine probes with time. If certain conditions are met which are described in detail, a relative uncertainty of less than 0.5% can be reached for probes irradiated with Co-60 in the 5-25 Gy dose range, including the uncertainty of the primary standard. First results for dose values between 2 Gy and 10 Gy are presented as well. From the high accuracy achievable with alanine dosimetry, we conclude that this method has great potential to solve measurement problems for modern methods of radiation therapy such as intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) or tomotherapy.