The Fricke Dosimeter as a 1-Hit Detector

A fit to the experimental data for the response of the Fricke dosimeter to energetic heavy ions is obtained using a calculation of the relative effectiveness of a 1-hit detector, from track theory. We use 2 fitted parameters, the target size, a0, which may be thought to represent a “diffusion length,” and E0, the dose of gamma-rays at which there is an average of one hit per target (the D-37 dose), and a new algorithm for the average radial distribution of dose in liquid water from the passing ion. The G value for ions is then given as the product of the calculated relative effectiveness and the experimental G value for gamma rays