Abstract
An inorganic scintillating material plastic optical fiber (POF) dosimeter for measuring ionizing radiation during radiotherapy applications is reported. It is necessary that an ideal dosimeter exhibits many desirable qualities, including water equivalence, energy independence, reproducibility, dose linearity. There has been much recent research concerning inorganic dosimeters. However, little reference has been made to date of the depth-dose characteristics of dosimeter materials. In the case of inorganic scintillating materials, they are predominantly non water-equivalent, with their effective atomic weight (Zeff) being typically much greater than that of water. This has been a barrier in preventing inorganic scintillating material dosimeter from being used in actual clinical applications. In this paper, we propose a parallel-paired fiber light guide structure to solve this problem. Two different inorganic scintillating materials are embedded separately in the parallel-paired fiber. It is shown that the information of water depth and absorbed dose at the point of measurement can be extracted by utilizing their different depth-dose properties.
Highlights
The ever-increasing sophistication of radiotherapy techniques, including techniques such as stereotactic radiosurgery, intensity-modulated radiation therapy, intraoperative radiation therapy, and intravascular brachytherapy, has driven an urgent demand for dosimeters which can provide accurate measurements in real time
The two-fiber dosimeter was tested at the External Radiation Beam Therapy clinic of the First Affiliated Hospital of the Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China using a Varian Linac (IX 3937)
An investigation has been conducted on the use of two different inorganic scintillating materials in a single two-fiber optical dosimeter for the purpose monitoring ionizing radiation
Summary
The ever-increasing sophistication of radiotherapy techniques, including techniques such as stereotactic radiosurgery, intensity-modulated radiation therapy, intraoperative radiation therapy, and intravascular brachytherapy, has driven an urgent demand for dosimeters which can provide accurate measurements in real time. As the scintillators are exposed to ionizing radiation, such as high-energy photons and/or electron beams (typically in the single MV and MeV range respectively), a visible wavelength optical signal is generated and guided by the Poly Methyl Methacrylate (PMMA) fiber toward distal photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) or other photon sensitive detectors placed far away from the irradiation zone (Usually 20 to 30 m). This kind of dosimeter arrangement can be subdivided into plastic scintillation dosimeters and inorganic scintillation dosimeters. In addition to all the advantages of other inorganic dosimeter listed above, it is shown that this dosimeter exhibits a similar depth-dose characteristic to organic scintillator dosimeters [25]
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