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.