Advances on inorganic scintillator-based optic fiber dosimeters

Liang Ding,Liang Zhao,Qiong Wu,Qun Wang,Richard M Perks,Yamei Li

doi:10.1186/s40658-020-00327-6

Abstract

This article presents a new perspective on the development of inorganic scintillator-based fiber dosimeters (IOSFDs) for medical radiotherapy dosimetry (RTD) focusing on real-time in vivo dosimetry. The scintillator-based optical fiber dosimeters (SFD) are compact, free of electromagnetic interference, radiation-resistant, and robust. They have shown great potential for real-time in vivo RTD. Compared with organic scintillators (OSs), inorganic scintillators (IOSs) have larger X-ray absorption and higher light output. Variable IOSs with maximum emission peaks in the red part of the spectrum offer convenient stem effect removal. This article outlines the main advantages and disadvantages of utilizing IOSs for SFD fabrication. IOSFDs with different configurations are presented, and their use for dosimetry in X-ray RT, brachytherapy (BT), proton therapy (PT), and boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is reviewed. Challenges including the percentage depth dose (PDD) deviation from the standard ion chamber (IC) measurement, the angular dependence, and the Cherenkov effect are discussed in detail; methods to overcome these problems are also presented.

Highlights

As a fundamental process for RT treatment, radiotherapy dosimetry (RTD) ensures that the radiation dose is safely and correctly delivered to the malignant abnormalities
This work reviewed the work on Inorganic scintillatorbased optical fiber dosimeter (IOSFD) for medical radiation dosimetry
The fundamentals of Inorganic scintillators (IOS) were reviewed in the “Fundamentals” section in terms of overall scintillation efficiency, decay time, mass attenuation coefficients, and energy dependence

Summary

Introduction

As a fundamental process for RT treatment, RTD ensures that the radiation dose is safely and correctly delivered to the malignant abnormalities. Research on the IOS-based SFDs (IOSFDs) shows that this particular type of SFD has promise in RT dosimetry applications due to their high sensitivity to low radiation dose rate and overwhelming signal intensity compared with the Cherenkov effect. This result demonstrated the potential of Y2O3:Eu-based IOSFD for in vivo and real-time dosimetry; the coating thickness of the phosphor attached to the fiber is not given, and the angular dependence requires further illustration regarding this kind of dosimeter.

Results

Conclusion