fabrication and optimization of a pagata gel dosimeter: increasing the melting point of the pagat gel dosimeter with agarose additive

introduction: the pagat polymer gel dosimeter melts at 30 ˚c and even at room temperature during the summer, so it needs to be kept in a cool place such as a refrigerator. to increase the stability of the pagat gel, different amounts of agarose were added to the pagat gel composition and the pagata gel was manufactured. material and methods: the pagata gel vials were irradiated using a co-60 machine. then, the samples were evaluated using a 1.5 t siemens mri scanner. the ingredients of the pagata normoxic gel dosimeter were 4.5% n-n' methylen-bis-acrylamide, 4.5% acrylamide, 4.5% gelatine, 5 mm tetrakis (thpc), 0.01 mm hydroquinone (hq), 0.5% agarose and 86% de-ionized water (hplc). results: melting point and sensitivity of the pagat gel dosimeter with addition of 0.0, 0.3, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0% of agarose were measured, in which the melting points were increased to 30, 82, 86, 88, 89 and 90°c and their sensitivities found to be 0.113, 0.1059, 0.125, 0.122, 0.115 and 0.2  respectively. discussion and conclusions: adding agarose increased the sensitivity and background r2 of the evaluated samples. the optimum amount of agarose was found to be 0.5% regarding these parameters and also the melting point of the gel dosimeter. a value of 0.5% agarose was found to be an optimum value considering the increase of sensitivity to 0.125 and melting point to 86°c but at the expense of increasing the background r2 to 4.530.