Absorbed dose

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). It is also used to directly compare the effect of radiation on inanimate matter such as in radiation hardening. The SI unit of measure is the gray (Gy), which is defined as one Joule of energy absorbed per kilogram of matter. The older, non-SI CGS unit rad, is sometimes also used, predominantly in the USA. Conventionally, in radiation protection, unmodified absorbed dose is only used for indicating the immediate health effects due to high levels of acute dose. These are tissue effects, such as in acute radiation syndrome, which are also known as deterministic effects. These are effects which are certain to happen in a short time. The time between exposure and vomiting may be used as a heuristic for quantifying a dose when more precise means of testing are unavailable. radiation therapy The measurement of absorbed dose in tissue is of fundamental importance in radiobiology as it is the measure of the amount of energy the incident radiation is imparting to the target tissue. The absorbed dose is equal to the radiation exposure (ions or C/kg) of the radiation beam multiplied by the ionization energy of the medium to be ionized. For example, the ionization energy of dry air at 20 °C and 101.325 kPa of pressure is 33.97J/C. (33.97 eV per ion pair) Therefore, an exposure of 2.58e-4C/kg (1 roentgen) would deposit an absorbed dose of 8.76e-3J/kg (0.00876 Gy or 0.876 rad) in dry air at those conditions. When the absorbed dose is not uniform, or when it is only applied to a portion of a body or object, an absorbed dose representative of the entire item can be calculated by taking a mass-weighted average of the absorbed doses at each point.