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Absorbed dose is a dose quantity which is the measure of the energy deposited in matter by ionizing radiation per unit mass.Absorbed dose is used in the calculation of dose uptake in living tissue in both radiation protection (reduction of harmful effects), and radiology (potential beneficial effects, for example in cancer treatment).
For an exposure of 1 roentgen by gamma rays with an energy of 1 MeV, the dose in air will be 0.877 rad, the dose in water will be 0.975 rad, the dose in silicon will be 0.877 rad, and the dose in averaged human tissue will be 1 rad. [10] "rad" stands for radiation absorbed dose. [4]
That model calculates an effective radiation dose, measured in units of rem, which is more representative of the stochastic risk than the absorbed dose in rad. In most power plant scenarios, where the radiation environment is dominated by X-or gamma rays applied uniformly to the whole body, 1 rad of absorbed dose gives 1 rem of effective dose. [5]
The absorbed dose, measured in rad, is a better indicator of ARS. [3]: 592–593 A rem is a large dose of radiation, so the millirem (mrem), which is one thousandth of a rem, is often used for the dosages commonly encountered, such as the amount of radiation received from medical x-rays and background sources.
Recognized effects of higher acute radiation doses are described in more detail in the article on radiation poisoning.Although the International System of Units (SI) defines the sievert (Sv) as the unit of radiation dose equivalent, chronic radiation levels and standards are still often given in units of millirems (mrem), where 1 mrem equals 1/1,000 of a rem and 1 rem equals 0.01 Sv.
Early on it was found that X-rays, gamma rays, and beta radiation were essentially equivalent for all cell types. Therefore, the standard radiation type X is generally an X-ray beam with 250 keV photons or cobalt-60 gamma rays. As a result, the relative biological effectiveness of beta and photon radiation is essentially 1.
Iridium-192 is a very strong gamma ray emitter, with a gamma dose-constant of approximately 1.54 μSv·h −1 ·MBq −1 at 30 cm, and a specific activity of 341 TBq·g −1 (9.22 kCi·g −1). [4] [5] There are seven principal energy packets produced during its disintegration process ranging from just over 0.2 to about 0.6 MeV.
This designed to take into account the biological effectiveness (RBE) of the radiation type, [8] For instance, for the same absorbed dose in Gy, alpha particles are 20 times as biologically potent as X or gamma rays. The measure of ‘dose equivalent’ is not organ averaged and now only used for "operational quantities".