Dosimetric characterization of the Exradin W1 plastic scintillator detector through comparison with an in-house developed scintillator system

Abstract

New commercial dosimetry systems need careful characterization and can benefit from the comparison with similar, in-house developed solutions. A comparison between such two dosimetry systems, both based on fibre-coupled organic plastic scintillator detectors, is presented. One system is the Exradin W1, fully commercialized by Standard Imaging, while the other system is the non-commercial ME40 system, developed by DTU Nutech with the aim of fundamental dosimetric research. Both systems employ plastic scintillator detectors that can be considered similar in design, calibrated using the same method, but differing primarily in the signal detection hardware. The two systems were compared with respect to essential dosimetric properties, with the purpose of testing their performance under conditions less well discussed in the literature. A Farmer ionization chamber was used as the primary reference of the comparison. The study demonstrated that the Cerenkov light ratio calibration coefficient of both systems was not constant, but changed systematically with photon beam quality to a maximum difference of 1.1%. Calibration with respect to stem effect correction should therefore be performed for every investigated beam quality when using plastic scintillator detectors. Both systems were found to be dose rate independent, even for the highest instantaneous dose rate evaluated (1.5 mGy per pulse). Low-dose measurements revealed large uncertainties for both systems, although the ME40 system handled short beam deliveries under reference conditions with accuracy and precision within 0.4%. Changes in response due to field size dependence were investigated and found to be as large as 3.3% for the W1 and 5.4% for the ME40, biasing output factor measurements in large fields. Great caution is therefore advised if using either system for measurements in large fields or under circumstances where the fibre irradiation geometry is unfavourable. Measurements of reference dose to water yielded differences up to 1.5% when compared with the Farmer ionization chamber for all investigated beam qualities.