scope:

The quality of a supplier of a dosimetry service depends on both the characteristics of the approved (type‑tested) dosimetry system¹⁾ and the training and experience of the staff, together with the calibration procedures and quality assurance programmes.

This document specifies the dosimetric and organizational criteria and the test procedures to be used for the periodic verification of the performance of dosimetry services supplying personal and/or workplace and/or environmental dosemeters.

The performance evaluation can be carried out as a part of the approval procedure for a dosimetry system or as an independent check to verify that a dosimetry service fulfils specified national or international type test performance requirements under representative exposure conditions that are expected or mimic workplace fields from the radiological activities being monitored.

This document applies to personal and area dosemeters for the assessment of external photon radiation with a fluence-weighted mean energy between 8 keV and 10 MeV, beta radiation with a fluence-weighted mean energy between 60 keV and 1,2 MeV, and neutron radiation with a fluence-weighted mean energy between 25,3 meV, i.e., thermal neutrons with a Maxwellian energy distribution with kT = 25,3 meV, and 200 MeV.

It covers all types of personal and area dosemeters needing laboratory processing (e.g., thermoluminescent, optically stimulated luminescence, radiophotoluminescent, track detectors or photographic-film dosemeters) and involving continuous measurements or measurements repeated regularly at fixed time intervals (e.g., several weeks, one month).

Active dosemeters (for dose measurement) may also be treated according to this document. Then, they should be treated as if they were passive, i.e., the dosimetry service reads their indicated values and reports them to the evaluation organization.

In this document, the corrected indicated value is the one given by the dosimetry systems as the final result of the evaluation algorithm (for example, display of the software, printout) in units of dose equivalent (Sv).

Environmental dosemeters for the quantity air kerma, K_a, or absorbed dose, D, may also be treated according to this document. All dose values stated in Sv shall then be interpreted as equivalent values in Gy.

¹⁾ If this document is applied to a dosimetry system for which no approval (pattern or type test) has been provided, then in the following text approval or type test should be read as the technical data sheet provided by the manufacturer or as the data sheet required by the regulatory authority.