 This property of alanine is used in dosimetric measurements in radiotherapy.When normal alanine is irradiated, the radiation causes certain alanine molecules to become free radicals, and, as these radicals are stable, the free radical content can later be measured by electron paramagnetic resonance in order to find out how much radiation the alanine was exposed to.This is considered to be a biologically relevant measure of the amount of radiation damage that living tissue would suffer under the same radiation exposure.