Relative effectiveness of polyacrylamide gel dosimeters applied to proton beams: Fourier transform Raman observations and track structure calculations.

The feasibility of using polyacrylamide gel (PAG) to characterize a clinically relevant 74 MeV proton beam has been considered. Fourier transform Raman spectroscopy has been used to measure the response (i.e., consumption of monomer) of PAG exposed to the central and end portions of a spread out Bragg peak (SOBP), i.e., in two regions with measurable difference in proton linear energy transfer (LET). The response curve in each region was compared with a typical 6 MV x-ray irradiated gel response curve, thus arriving at a gel "relative effectiveness" (RE) in each of the two regions. In addition, the theory of track structure, which is typically used to calculate a detector RE, is shown to give reasonable agreement when compared with the experimental results. Both experimental and track structure results indicate a decrease in gel response when irradiated with protons, as compared with the x-ray response. In addition, both sets of results indicate a variation in gel response between the mid and end SOBP regions, thus illuminating the dependence of gel response to proton LET. The physical phenomenon causing a lower proton versus x-ray gel response may be understood by considering the track structure calculations, which indicate that gel radiosensitive elements close to the track of a proton (i.e., within 1.5 x 10(-6) cm) are saturated. This saturation is due to the high delta-ray doses deposited in these regions. The track calculations are extended to other situations (e.g., raw BP, different gel compositions) where experimental determination of RE is difficult or time consuming. Results again indicate a gel response dependent on position in the depth dose curve (i.e., LET). Overall, this study illuminates the difficulty in using polyacrylamide gel to extract quantitative dose maps when exposed to proton radiation.