Abstract
In this study, we have studied the effects of temperature and X-ray energy variations on the light output signals from two different fiber-optic sensors, a fiber-optic dosimeter (FOD) based on a BCF-12 as a plastic scintillating fiber (PSF) and a fiber-optic thermometer (FOT) using a silver halide optical fiber as an infrared optical fiber (IR fiber). During X-ray beam irradiation, the scintillating light and IR signals were measured simultaneously using a dosimeter probe of the FOD and a thermometer probe of the FOT. The probes were placed in a beaker with water on the center of a hotplate, under variation of the tube potential of a digital radiography system or the temperature of the water in the beaker. From the experimental results, in the case of the PSF, the scintillator light output at the given tube potential decreased as the temperature increased in the temperature range from 25 to 60 °C. We demonstrated that commonly used BCF-12 has a significant temperature dependence of −0.263 ± 0.028%/°C in the clinical temperature range. Next, in the case of the IR fiber, the intensity of the IR signal was almost uniform at each temperature regardless of the tube potential range from 50 to 150 kVp. Therefore, we also demonstrated that the X-ray beam with an energy range used in diagnostic radiology does not affect the IR signals transmitted via a silver halide optical fiber.
Highlights
Optical fiber-based sensors offer many advantages over conventional sensors, including small sensing volume, light weight, good flexibility, real-time and remote sensing, absence of electrical wires in the sensing probe, and immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radiofrequency interference (RFI)
Various experimental studies on the plastic scintillator response to low-energy photon beam have been carried out, and it was reported that the plastic scintillators have non-linearity in their scintillation response to low-energy X-rays in the range used for diagnostic radiology [4,6,7,26,27,28]
We demonstrated that an X-ray beam having an energy range used in diagnostic radiology does not affect the IR signals transmitted through a silver halide optical fiber
Summary
Optical fiber-based sensors offer many advantages over conventional sensors, including small sensing volume, light weight, good flexibility, real-time and remote sensing, absence of electrical wires in the sensing probe, and immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radiofrequency interference (RFI). For medical usage, fiber-optic dosimeters (FODs) and fiber-optic thermometers (FOTs) have been investigated to obtain radiation and temperature information, respectively. Over the past 20 years, fiber-coupled organic scintillators including plastic scintillating fibers (PSFs) have been traditionally used for in situ dose measurement because of their desirable dosimetric qualities, such as a highly water equivalent characteristic, fast decay time, high spatial resolution, minimal perturbation of the radiation field, and the capability of providing real-time dose monitoring for in vivo dosimetry [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. BCF-12 exhibited a 0.09% decrease and BCF-60 a 0.50% decrease in measured dose per °C increase, relative to the dose measured at 22 °C
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