Dosimetry for radiobiology experiments at GANIL

Abstract : Mainly encouraged by the increasing application of ion beams for cancer treatment (hadron-therapy) including carbon beams, the use of heavy ion facilities for radiobiology is expanding rapidly today. As an alternative to dedicated centers for treatment and medical research, accelerators like GANIL offer the possibility to undertake such experiments. Since 20 years, CIMAP, reinforced 15 years ago by the biological host laboratory LARIA, has been receiving researchers in radiobiology and assisted them in performing experiments in different fields such as hadron-therapy, space radioprotection and fundamental biological and physico-chemical mechanisms. We present here a short description of the beam line and the on-line equipments that allow the automatic irradiation of up to 24 biological samples at once. We also developed an original on-line beam monitoring procedure for low ion flux (low dose rates) based on the measurement of the K-shell X-rays emitted from a thin iron foil. This detector is calibrated on an absolute scale before each experiment by counting etched tracks on an irradiated CR39 polymer plate. We present the performances and limits of this method and finally give typical fluence (dose) uncertainties for a standard irradiation in radiobiology.