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Calculation of the average energy absorbed in photon interactions
Author(s) -
Cunningham J. R.,
Johns H. E.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.594658
Subject(s) - bremsstrahlung , photon , dosimetry , absorption (acoustics) , physics , electron , computational physics , atomic number , radiation , photon energy , effective atomic number , energy (signal processing) , absorbed dose , atomic physics , nuclear physics , optics , quantum mechanics , nuclear medicine , medicine
High energy electrons set into motion by photon interactions with matter lose some of their energy by bremsstrahlung. This loss must be evaluated before energy absorption coefficients may be calculated. Recent extensive tables of data published by Plechaty et al . contain an appreciable error in this quantity. The error results from two simplifying assumptions and for the case of very high photon energies interacting with high atomic number materials can be as much as a factor of two. This has important implications for the evaluation of quantities used in radiation dosimetry.