학술논문

Preliminary investigation of radiation dose sensors based on aluminum-doped silicate optical fibers
Document Type
Conference
Source
2020 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA) Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA), 2020 IEEE International Symposium on. :1-5 Jun, 2020
Subject
Engineering Profession
Optical fibers
Optical fiber sensors
Biomedical optical imaging
Sensitivity
Optical variables measurement
Optical scattering
Optical reflection
Radiation monitoring
Radiation dosage
Ionizing radiation sensors
Language
Abstract
The paper reports on the first demonstration of in-situ, real-time dosimetry realized with an enhanced back-scattering optical fiber and a high-resolution optical back-scattering reflectometry measurement. This work is devised to overcome the current problems in monitoring radiotherapy treatments, in particular the difficult evaluation of not only the actual x-ray dose that is accumulated on the target volume, but also the distribution profile of the ionizing radiation beam. The experiments have been conducted by evaluating the radiation- induced spectral shift of the Rayleigh back-scattering along the fiber under test during x-ray exposure, in a radiation chamber. The sensing region is a section of aluminum-doped silicate fiber, that overcomes the poor sensitivity to radiation of standard, germanium-doped, silicate fibers for telecom applications. The preliminary results show that it is possible to remotely track the x-ray dose at high dose rates (700 Gy/min) and at rates closer to therapeutic values (22 Gy/min). A linear relationship between accumulated dose and spectral shift has been found. This research aims at developing a dose sensor with the most demanding features of small form factor, spatial profiling and remote interrogation.