Use of maximum temperature for correction of alanine dosimetry in electron beams

Alanine dosimetry is well characterized for irradiation temperature response. In use, alanine absorbed dose response is corrected for the irradiation temperature. The temperature used to correct alanine dosimetry absorbed dose response in electron beams has historically been the mean temperature occurring during irradiation (Sharpe and Miller, 2009). At lower absorbed doses, the change in temperature is relatively low; thus the absorbed dose response correction due to temperature is small. However, industrial electron beam processing often requires higher absorbed dose measurements where the change in temperature can be very large and the corresponding dose response correction for alanine becomes significant. This paper compares the impact of the temperature correction based on the use of a mean irradiation temperature (Sharpe and Miller, 2009) versus the use of a maximum irradiation temperature on the absorbed dose measurement. The results of this comparison indicate that the use of a mean temperature correction for higher absorbed doses measured with temperature corrected alanine dosimetry introduces a bias in the absorbed dose estimate.