PRELIMINARY MAGNETIC RESONANCE RELAXOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF FRICKE GEL DOSIMETERS PRODUCED WITH POLYVINYLALCOHOL AND GLUTARALDEHYDE

Abstract

This work describes the preliminary analysis of Fricke gels dosimeters characterized by a new formulation making use of a matrix of Poly-vinyl alcohol cross-linked by adding Glutaraldehyde and analyzed by means of nuclear magnetic resonance relaxometry. In previous optical studies, these gels have shown promising dosimetric features in terms of photon sensitivity and low-diffusion of ferric ions produced after irradiation. In this work, we used a portable nuclear magnetic resonance relaxometer to measure the relaxation times (which are important for dosimetric applications) of these gel materials. At this aim, we performed a study for optimizing the acquisition parameters with nuclear magnetic resonance relaxometer. Gel samples were exposed to clinical 6 MV photons in the dose range between 0 and 20 Gy. Nuclear magnetic resonance relaxometry measurements were performed and the sensitivity to photon beams was measured for various values of the Fe2+ ion concentration. The analyses pointed out that the MR signal increases as the Fe2+ content increases and the increase is about 75% when the concentration of Fe2+ ions is increased from 0.5 mM to 2.5 mM. Furthermore, the sensitivity improvement achieved with increasing the Fe2+ concentration is about 60%. This paper shows that portable nuclear magnetic resonance relaxometer used for analysis of porous materials can be used for characterization of these dosimetric gels and this study can be considered as the first step for the characterization of these dosimeters which in the future could be used for 3D dose mapping in clinical applications.