Abstract
A miniature fiber-optic dosimeter (FOD) system was fabricated using a plastic scintillating fiber, a plastic optical fiber, and a multi-pixel photon counter to measure real-time entrance surface dose (ESD) during radiation diagnosis. Under varying exposure parameters of a digital radiography (DR) system, we measured the scintillating light related to the ESD using the sensing probe of the FOD, which was placed at the center of the beam field on an anthropomorphic thorax phantom. Also, we obtained DR images using a flat panel detector of the DR system to evaluate the effects of the dosimeter on image artifacts during posteroanterior (PA) chest radiography. From the experimental results, the scintillation output signals of the FOD were similar to the ESDs including backscatter simultaneously obtained using a semiconductor dosimeter. We demonstrated that the proposed miniature FOD can be used to measure real-time ESDs with minimization of DR image artifacts in the X-ray energy range of diagnostic radiology.
Highlights
In diagnostic radiology and radiotherapy, measurement of the delivered dose is very important to minimize unnecessary exposure
While varying the exposure parameters of a digital radiography (DR) system, we measured the scintillating light related to the entrance surface dose (ESD) using the sensing probe of the fiber-optic dosimeter (FOD), which was placed at the center of the beam field on the anthropomorphic thorax phantom
We demonstrated that the total counts of the FOD are only affected by the ESD values even though each exposure parameter is changed independently
Summary
In diagnostic radiology and radiotherapy, measurement of the delivered dose is very important to minimize unnecessary exposure. An ideal dosimeter should have a small sized sensitive element, a tissue- or water-equivalent characteristic, and the capability of providing real-time dose monitoring for in vivo dosimetry. Thin dosimeters, such as TLDs, GRDs, and films, have been previously proposed for measuring dose information directly. These thin dosimeters can provide dose information with high spatial resolution, they cannot be used for real-time dosimetry because they require a time-consuming reading process after beam irradiation [1,2,3]. While most FODs have been developed to measure real-time absorbed dose in radiotherapy [9,10,11,12,13,14], fewer studies on the use of FODs have been performed for diagnostic radiology [5,6,15,16,17]
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