Development of Mailed Dosimetric Audit for External Beam Radiation Therapy Using Alanine Dosimeters

This project's aim is to provide the basis for an on-demand dosimetry service for the independent check of dose delivery in external beam radiation therapy in Canadian cancer centres. The service will use mailed alanine dosimeters, and therefore the main focus of the project was to develop a low dose, clinically applicable, alanine dosimetry protocol. Alanine dosimetry was originally developed for industrial uses of radiation (kGy dose levels) and there are a series of hurdles that have to be overcome to achieve acceptable accuracy at clinically realistic doses (a few Gy). Techniques for the correct readout procedure, choice of dosimeter, sample handling and detector operation were developed and/or adopted from the literature with the aim of obtaining dose measurements with an overall uncertainty below 1%.