Construction and performance of a dose-verification scintillation-fiber detector for proton therapy

Abstract

A multilayer scintillation-fiber detector has been developed for precision measurement of time-dependent dose verification in proton therapy. In order to achieve the time and position sensitivity required for the precision dose measurements, a prototype detector was constructed with double-clad 1-mm-thick scintillation fibers and 128-channel silicon photodiodes. The hole charges induced in each channel of the silicon photodiodes were amplified and processed with a charge-integration mode. The detector was tested with 45-MeV proton beams provided by the MC50 cyclotron at the Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Science (KIRAMS). The detector response for a 45-MeV proton beam was agreed fairly well with the predicted by GEANT4 simulations. Furthermore, the quantitative accuracy appearing in the spatial distribution of the detector response measured for 20s is in the order of 1%, whose accuracy is satisfactory to verify beam-induced dose in proton therapy. We anticipate that the detector composed of scintillation fibers and operating in the charge-integration mode allows us to perform quality measurement of dynamic therapeutic beams.