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Alongside with the development of Neutron Capture Therapy (NCT) and the use of thermal neutrons for radiotherapeutic purposes, many efforts have been devoted to the characterization of the beam in order to optimize therapy procedures. Reliable dose measurements should be able to determine the various (neutrons and photonic) components of the mixed beam usually employed for therapy. This paper studies the effect of additives such as Boric and Gadolinium nuclei on the sensitivity of neutron organic (alanine and ammonium tartrate) dosimeters analyzed through Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) technique. These dosimeters were exposed to a mixed (neutron-gamma) field mainly composed of thermal neutrons. The choice of 10B and 64Gd as nuclei additives is due to their very high capture cross section for thermal neutrons. Also, after the nuclear reaction with thermal neutrons are emitted particles, which in turn release their energy in the vicinity of the reaction site. The irradiation with mixed (neutron-gamma) field were performed within the thermal column of the TRIGA reactor, University of Pavia. Dosimeters readout was performed through the Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) spectrometer Bruker ECS106 located at the Laboratory of Dosimetry ESR / TL of the Department of Physics and Chemistry - University of Palermo. We found that the addition of Gadolinium allows to largely increase the sensitivity of the dosimeters for thermal neutrons. In particular, a low concentration (5% by weight) of gadolinium oxide leads to an improvement of the sensitivity of neutrons more than 10 times. In addition, for this low content of gadolinium the photon tissue equivalence is not heavily reduced. This experimental analyses are compared with computational analyses carried out by means of Monte Carlo simulations performed with the MCNP (Monte Carlo N-Particle) transport code. A good agreement was observed for alanine dosimeters.

The development of Neutron Capture Therapy (NCT) for cancer treatments has stimulated the research for beam characterization in order to optimize the therapy procedures. The NCT has found to be promising for treatments of tumours which hardly can be treated with other techniques, such as gliomas. Alongside with the improvements of this technique, the development of procedures for the beam characterization arouses great interest in order to optimize the therapy protocol by reliably determining the various (neutronic and photonic) components of the mixed beam usually employed for therapy. Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) dosimetry for electron and photon beams with alanine has attracted the attention of many research groups for dosimetric purposes. Furthermore, the applications of EPR dosimetry for high LET radiation beams, such as carbon ions and neutrons, are continuously increasing. This is because of the very good dosimetric features of alanine EPR detectors such as: tissue equivalence for photon beams, linearity of its dose-response over a wide range, high stability of radiation induced free radicals, no destructive read-out procedure, no need of sample treatment before EPR signal measurement and low cost of the dosimeters. Moreover, in order to improve the sensitivity to thermal neutrons of alanine dosimeters the addition of nuclei such as gadolinium oxidewas previously studied. The choice of Gd as additive nucleus is due to its very high capture cross section to thermal neutrons and to the possibility for secondary particles produced after interaction with thermal neutrons of releasing their energy in the neighbourhood of the reaction site. In particular, it was found that low concentration (i.e. 5% by weight) of gadolinium oxide brings about an neutron sensitivity enhancement of more than 10 times without heavily reducing tissue equivalence. We have studied the response of alanine pellets with and without gadolinium exposed to the thermal column of the TRIGA Mark II research reactor at the University of Mainz. Pure alanine dosimeters used were produced by Synergy Health (Germany) whereas the Gd-added dosimeters were produced at the University of Palermo. The irradiations were performed inside polyethylene holders to guarantee charged particles equilibrium conditions. The results of EPR experiments are compared to Monte Carlo (MC) simulations aimed at obtaining information about the contribution of the various components to the total dose measured by means of EPR dosimeters. For alanine dosimeters a good agreement between experimental data and MC simulation have been achieved.

Monte Carlo numerical calculations of the response of alanine and ammonium tartrate ESR (electron spin resonance) dosimeters exposed to neutron fields with different energy spectra are reported. Results have been obtained for various gadolinium concentrations inside the dosimeters. Furthermore, in order to simulate the in-phantom response we have carried out calculations by varying the depth of the dosimeter. We have found that a large enhancement is obtained for thermal neutrons, because of the very high capture cross section of gadolinium to thermal neutrons. A good enhancement was obtained for epithermal neutrons, whereas the sensitivity improvement in the case of fast neutron irradiation is poor. Furthermore, the simulations carried out by varying the depth suggests that an appreciable sensitivity to thermal and epithermal neutrons could be observed for in-phantom measurements in the 2–3 cm depth range. These results can provide useful insight for future experiments with epithermal neutron beams (such as those used in neutron capture therapy) and for future applications in neutron capture therapy dosimetry.

We investigated the ESR response of new materials, alanine and ammonium tartrate to which gadolinium was added. The addition of gadolinium enhances sensitivity for Co 60 γ -photons because of its high atomic number ( Z = 64 ) and an enhancement of sensitivity for thermal neutrons because of its high thermal neutron cross section and high linear energy transfer (LET) secondary particles produced after the reaction with neutrons. In particular, in this paper we analyzed the microwave power saturation properties of dosimeters of alanine and ammonium tartrate with or without gadolinium exposed to different LET beams. The power saturation trends of dosimeters exposed to photons and to thermal neutrons are different. For ammonium tartrate dosimeters the gadolinium addition intensifies significantly these differences and therefore, it improves the ammonium tartrate's ability to discriminate the radiation LET .

In this paper, the results of a study on the electron spin resonance (ESR) dosimetry to measure thermal neutron fluence in a mixed radiation field (neutron and photons) are presented. The ESR responses of alanine dosemeters with different additives are compared. In particular, the (10)B-acid boric and the Gd-oxide were chosen to enhance the sensitivity of alanine dosemeters to thermal neutrons. Irradiations were carried out inside the thermal column of the TAPIRO reactor of the ENEA center, Casaccia Rome. The main results are a greater neutron sensitivity and a smaller lowest detectable fluence for the dosemeters with gadolinium than for dosemeters of alanine with (10)B, which is well known to be much more sensitive to thermal neutrons than simple alanine.

The main gol of the present work is to investigate the response behaviour of alanine EPR pellets in clinical proton anc carbon ion beams. Proton irradiations were carried out at PSI (Switzerland) using both passive and active scattering modality, whereas, C ions irradiation were performed at GSI (Germany) adopting the raster scanning modality.

This paper reports on results obtained by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) measurements and Monte Carlo (MC) simulation on a blend of alanine added with low content of gadolinium oxide (5 % by weight) to improve the sensitivity to thermal neutron without excessively affecting tissue equivalence. The sensitivity is enhanced by this doping procedure of more an order of magnitude. The results are compared with those obtained with the addition of boric acid (50 % by weight) where boron is in its natural isotopic composition in order to produce low-cost EPR dosemeters. The gadolinium addition influences neutron sensitivity more than the boron addition. The presence of additives does not substantially change the fading of the EPR signal induced by neutrons. The MC simulations agree the experimental results in case of gadolinium addition.

In this study we analyzed the ESR signal of alanine dosimeters with gadolinium exposed to 6 MV linear accelerator photons. We observed that the addition of gadolinium brings about an improvement in the sensitivity to photons because of its high atomic number. The experimental data indicated that the addition of gadolinium increases the sensitivity of the alanine to 6 MV photons. This enhancement was better observed at high gadolinium concentrations for which the tissue equivalence is heavily reduced. However, information about the irradiation setup and of the radiation beam features allows one to correct for this difference. Monte Carlo simulations were carried out to obtain information on the expected effect of the addition of gadolinium on the dose absorbed by the alanine molecules inside the pellets. These results are compared with the experimental values, and the agreement is discussed.

Many efforts have been made to develop neutron capture therapy (NCT) for cancer treatment. Among the challenges in using NCT is the characterization of the features of the mixed radiation field and of its components. In this study, we examined the enhancement of the ESR response of pellets of alanine and ammonium tartrate with gadolinium oxide exposed to a thermal neutron beam. In particular, the ESR response of these dosimeters as a function of the gadolinium content inside the dosimeter was analyzed. We found that the addition of gadolinium improves the sensitivity of both alanine and ammonium tartrate. However, the use of gadolinium involves a reduces in or abolishes tissue equivalence because of its high atomic number (ZGd 64). Therefore, it is necessary to find the optimum compromise between the sensitivity to thermal neutrons and the reduction of tissue equivalence. Our analysis showed that a low concentration of gadolinium oxide (of the order of 5% of the total mass of the dosimeter) can enhance the thermal neutron sensitivity more than 13 times with an insignificant reduction of tissue equivalence.

ESR response to gamma-irradiation (1-50 Gy) of blends containing alanine and either B(OH)(3) or Gd(2)O(3) is reported. The sensitivity of the alanine--B(OH)(3) blend is comparable to the sensitivity of pure alanine, although its lowest detectable dose, LDD, is smaller ( approximately 1.3 Gy) than that of pure alanine ( approximately 2.9 Gy). Alanine with Gd(2)O(3) is about two times more sensitive than pure alanine, and its LDD is 0.8 Gy. The better sensitivity and LDD are probably due to the high atomic number (Z=64) of gadolinium, which enhances the interaction probability with photons and, consequently, the radical yield. This study suggests that other high-Z atoms may be useful for increasing the sensitivity of the response of alanine to gamma-radiation.