The studies proposed aim to develop improved polymer gels that may be used for accurate measurements of radiation dose distributions in three dimensions. Polymer gel dosimeters were first developed in our laboratory for use with MRI, which records the changes in NMR relaxation times of water protons produced by irradiation of mixtures of monomers in an aqueous gel. Such gels are tissue equivalent and provide unique and accurate measurements of integrated dose distributions in three dimensions with high spatial resolution. Nonetheless, there remain significant problems in the use of currently available polymer gels in practice that have limited their wider use. These include difficulties of preparation and storage of gels, which must be made and kept hypoxic until used and which therefore cannot be poured in plastic or arbitrary containers: their variable sensitivity, which largely arises from the influence of trace amounts of oxygen which inhibit their response: and the limited dose response, which is based on measuring changes in T2 values that are subject to errors. The studies proposed would lead to significantly improved gels that are more sensitive, more stable, and which can be made in a normal atmosphere and any container by a hospital physicist without special procedures. In preliminary studies we have produced gels in room air that are much more sensitive than current gels. These use a novel initiator system based on copper ion and ascorbic acid which combines with and requires molecular oxygen to start polymerization when the gel is irradiated. We will optimize the performance of these dosimeters by exploring the effects of different concentrations and components of this system. We have also shown that relaxation in irradiated gels occurs via magnetization transfer (MT) between free water and labile protons in contact with a semi-solid pool in the polymer. We will design and verify the performance of MT-sensitive sequences that avoid the pitfalls of T2 measurements for imaging gels to extract accurate dose information. We also postulate that the dose- response of polymer gels simply reflects a linear increase in the size of this semi-solid proton pool with increasing dose and we will perform novel NMR and other physical measurements to verify this model. Overall we aim to produce much improved gels for practical applications and obtain a better and more quantitative understanding of how they respond to radiation.
| Gultekin, David H; Raidy, Thomas E; Gore, John C (2009) Effects of radiation on the NMR relaxation effects of aqueous solutions of gadolinium contrast agents. Contrast Media Mol Imaging 4:33-6 |
| Whitney, Heather M; Gochberg, Daniel F; Gore, John C (2008) Magnetization transfer proportion: a simplified measure of dose response for polymer gel dosimetry. Phys Med Biol 53:7107-24 |
| Luci, J J; Whitney, H M; Gore, J C (2007) Optimization of MAGIC gel formulation for three-dimensional radiation therapy dosimetry. Phys Med Biol 52:N241-8 |
| Joers, J M; Fong, P M; Gore, J C (2006) Detection of radiation effects in polymer gel dosimeters using 129Xe NMR. Phys Med Biol 51:N23-30 |
| Gochberg, Daniel F; Fong, Peter M; Gore, John C (2003) A quantitative study of magnetization transfer in MAGIC gels. Phys Med Biol 48:N277-82 |
