Uncertainty attributed to signal averaging in a single averaged alanine EPR spectrum for low-dose applications

During the past 50 y alanine has been considered a reference dosimetry system using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), especially for the high doses associated with radiation processing. Extension of alanine/EPR system applications to the lower doses associated with radiation therapy and/or radiation protection is limited by the ability to extract the dosimetric signal with minimum associated noise. The signal-averaging technique is one of the common numerical methods used for enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio, through which the accumulated repetitive scans causes the reduction of noise due to its random behaviour and the signal growth due to its persistence. However, the use of signal averaging is usually associated with some uncertainty, which is not usually considered. In this work, there is a clarification of the importance of the evaluation of uncertainty associated to the single averaged alanine spectrum.