QUARTZ CRYSTAL DOSIMETER FOR PHOTON RADIATION

The most important quantity of irradiation, the absorbed dose can be determined in most measuring systems only after the introduction of a calibration factor (in contrast with the exposure which often is still used). This because during the process of measuring only a certain part of the deposited energy is registered. In this paper the well known temperature dependence of the resonance frequency from a quartz resonator is used to measure the absorbed dose of photon radiation in quartz directly and inertialess with a quasidigital method. The high resolution in temperature measurement enables the registration of low quantities of absorbed dose with this small probe, too. This newly developed, cost saving quartz crystal calorimeter was used to determine the absorbed dose rate of a Co-60-source as well as of a therapy x-ray tube. For the presented caloric determination of the absorbed dose rate not any calibration or standardization is needed.