Developing a radiochromic dosimeter for dosimetry in blood irradiation chambers

Abstract

Blood transfusion is known as a safe treatment, but it can sometimes be potentially dangerous. Despite careful examination, if the necessary precautions are not taken, blood transfusions can be unsafe for the recipient, and the risks can be fatal. Stable lymphocytes in blood products can cause fatal transplant reactions, and cause Transfusion-associated graft-versus-host disease, TA-GVHD. Prevention of this complication is possible only by direct irradiation of blood products before injection.In this study, a Fricke Xylenol Gel (FXG) dosimeter with the effective atomic number of 7.3 and density of 1.05 g/cm3 has been proposed for accurate blood irradiation dosimetry. This dosimeter is a radiochromic chemical tissue-equivalent dosimeter, which can be read out by spectrophotometry. In addition, a simple and rapid method has been proposed to determine the absorbed dose in the FXG dosimeter, using a negatoscope, and a camera. The results show that the dosimeter developed in this study can be used in the dose range required for blood dosimetry, 5–50 Gy. The dosimetry process can be performed with an uncertainty of less than 5%. The results show that this dosimeter has the acceptable properties to control the dosimetry quality of blood radiation for the prevention of transplant complications against the host.