Characterization of OSL Al2O3:C droplets for medical dosimetry

Radiation dosimetry for industrial and medical purposes has steadily evolved over the last few decades with the introduction of several new detectors. Al2O3:C (Akselrod et al., 1990) is a widely used Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) material in gamma, x-ray and beta radiation dosimetry and, more recently, it has also been tested for particle therapy (Yukihara et al., 2010).One advantage of this material is the capability of acquiring both dose rate and total dose, from two different phenomena observed in the Al2O3:C crystal: radioluminescence (RL) and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), respectively. The possibility on having very thin Al2O3:C powder allows preparing droplets, which can be made with different volume concentrations and different sizes and can be used as basis for a 2D dosimetry system. In this article droplets were characterized using 60Co, 137Cs, 90Sr/90Y and electron and photon medical beams.

► Droplets composed of thin powder of Al2O3:C were prepared using a photo-curable polymer.
► Powder grain sizes ranged from 5 to 35 μm.
► The droplets were characterized in calibration sources to be used as a basis of a 2D matrix detector.
► The droplets were exposed to different medical beam.