Application of solid state integrating dosemeters to the determination of biologically equivalent doses in space

If the biological responses are well approximated by the efficiencies of solid-state integrating dosemeters (SSID), the biologically equivalent doses can be simply estimated using SSID. For demonstrating the applicability of this method to space radiation dosimetry, biologically equivalent doses for two biological endpoints (enzyme inactivation and cell survival) were evaluated in the 8.8 d Shuttle-Mir mission (STS-89) using three commercial thermoluminescence dosemeters: Mg2SiO4:Tb, BeO:Na and 7LiF:Mg,Ti. The approximate biologically equivalent doses at two positions in the Spacehab module were found to be significantly different for trypsin inactivation, whereas they were almost identical for mammalian cell survival.