Enhancement the dosimetric properties of N-(3-methoxypropyl) acrylamide polymer gel dosimeter for cancer treatment

Abstract

Recent studies related to the polymer gel dosimetry technique for radiation therapy have shown the importance of using additive of different concentrations to the polymer gel to improve the dose sensitivity. This work provides a significant improvement on the developed N-(3-methoxypropyl) acrylamide polymer gel dosimeter by incorporated with an inorganic salt of calcium chloride (CaCl2). Nuclear Magnetic Resonance relaxometry read out technique was used to examine dose-response after irradiation by measuring the change in the relaxation rate of R2. A medical linear accelerator with 6 MV photon beams and a 200 cGy/min dose rate was used to irradiate the developed gel with different absorbed doses. It was evidently clear from the findings that the R2 dose sensitivity of the developed polymer gel increased significantly by adding different concentrations of CaCl2 reaching 3.5 times higher than that without salt. The dose-response of the improved gel at various concentrations of co-monomer. Also, the dependency on the radiation dose rate, photon energy and irradiation temperature was investigated. Additionally, the stability of unirradiated as well as irradiated gel for 7-days post-irradiation was reported.