TU‐F‐BRE‐01: A High Resolution Micro Fiber Scintillator Detector Optimized for SRS and SBRT in Vivo Real Time Treatment Verification

Abstract

Purpose:We have built a high resolution real time scintillating fiber detector prototype to determine in real time the accuracy of stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) treatments when only a fraction of the planned dose was delivered. The motivation of this work is to enhance dose delivery accuracy and to achieve error free radiosurgery.Methods:A high density array of scintillating fibers and a high speed photo detectors array were integrated to implement a high resolution real time dosimeter that can sample with high resolution pulsed SRS and SBRT beams cross sections. The high efficiency of the developed system allows to read each linac pulse in real time and to compute the accumulated dose and dose errors when only a fraction of the beam was delivered. The fibers are highly packed in a substrate that is directly coupled to two 128 pixel arrays with a pitch matching the fiber spacing to achieve accurate spatial localization. The small cross section of the fiber array allows stacking multiple fiber arrays to measure independent angular profiles that are digitally processed in parallel for real time dosimetry.Results:We implemented a high density array detector prototype with a pitch of 0.5 mm, readout speed of 1.2 msec, and a response time of 0.5 usec. The fast reading speed has the capability to determining the dose in flattening free filter beams. The detector can be installed in transmission mode at the output port of a micro‐MLC. Treatment deviations smaller than 3% are detected when less than 1/100 of the planned dose was delivered.Conclusions:We built a prototype of a high resolution fiber scintillator array detector for SRS and SBRT in vivo dosimetry. Results show that the developed detector has the potential to assure error free SRS and SBRT treatments.