Development of an alanine dosimetry system for radiation dose measurements in the radiotherapy range

Alanine/ESR systems provide an interesting alternative to standard dosimetry systems like solid state or gas ionization chambers for dosimetry in radiotherapy. This is primarily due to the negligible energy dependence, high stability, and the possibility of using small pellets that are especially suitable for the dosimetry of small fields. In order to obtain acceptable dose uncertainties in the radiotherapy dose range, the setup, operational parameters and quantification methods need to be carefully investigated and optimized. In this work we present the development of an alanine/ESR dosimetry system, traced to the secondary standard laboratory of absorbed dose to water at the Radiation Physics Laboratory of the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Spain). We focus on the setup, the optimization of the operational parameters of the ESR spectrometer, the quantification of the readout signal and the construction of a calibration curve. The evaluation of the uncertainty budget is also a key component of an alanine/ESR system for radiotherapy dosimetry, and is presented in detail. After the optimization of the procedures, we have achieved a relative uncertainty of 1.7% (k = 2) for an absorbed dose of 10 Gy, decreasing to 0.9% for 50 Gy.