Watch glasses exposed to 6 MV photons and 10 MeV electrons analysed by means of ESR technique: A preliminary study

Abstract In this work we report a case study of the ESR response of watch glasses exposed to 6 MV photons and to 10 MeV electrons. The choice of watch glasses is justified by the fact that watch glasses are very close to the exposed individual. For both types of radiation beams, the absorbed doses belong to the range between 1 and 20 Gy. The samples have been irradiated in water-equivalent plastic phantom with a linear accelerator used for radiotherapy. After exposure watch glass samples have been cut in small strip-shaped pieces with suitable size to be put into the quartz tube for ESR measurements. The signal induced by radiation (RIS) lies in the g ∼ 2 region and must be discriminated from the background signal (BS). An analysis of both signals has been carried out in order to isolate the signal sensitive to ionizing radiation from the background one. We have studied the ESR response of irradiated samples as a function of the absorbed dose. Furthermore estimates of the detection limits have been achieved.