Scintillating fiber phantom dosimeter to measure real-time dose distribution of Co-60 teletherapy source

Abstract

In this study, we developed a scintillating fiber phantom dosimeter (SFPD) that can measure the transverse and longitudinal dose distributions of a Co-60 teletherapy source. The SFPD system is composed of organic scintillating fibers, polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) phantoms, and a complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) sensor camera. When the phantom dosimeter is irradiated with gamma rays from a Co-60 teletherapy source, scintillating lights are emitted from the scintillating fibers inserted in the phantom dosimeter. The scintillating images are measured using a CMOS camera in real time and analyzed using an image processing program. The proposed phantom dosimeter has many advantages such as real-time measurement, easy calibration, and immunity to electromagnetic interference. In addition, it can measure complex dose distributions more precisely, because it has a high spatial resolution due to the small size of organic scintillating fibers. To evaluate the performance of the proposed phantom dosimeter, transverse and longitudinal dose distributions are measured using the CMOS sensor camera. Dose distributions are measured according to the field sizes and compared to the results obtained using an EBT3 film and MCNPX calculations.