Preliminary dosimetric characterisation of thermoluminescent materials for beta radiation monitoring at nuclear medicine services

Abstract

Beta emitters are widely used in nuclear medicine for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. The critical groups exposed to a radioactive patient include the staff, other patients and members of the public accompanying the patient. The aim of this work is to characterise thermoluminescent (TL) materials for the staff monitoring of nuclear medicine services that manipulate beta radiation solutions of 153Sm. This study was performed using CaSO4:Dy + Teflon pellets, produced at IPEN, with different dimensions. For the dosimetric characterisation, these TL dosemeters were exposed to gamma source (60Co) and to beta sealed sources (90Sr + 90Y, 204Tl and 147Pm) and to a non-sealed source (153Sm). Results were obtained related to reproducibility, lower detection limits, calibration curves, angle and energy dependence of response. All tested materials show usefulness for monitoring of workers exposed to beta radiation.