MOSFET dosimetry for microbeam radiation therapy at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility

Preclinical experiments are carried out with ~20–30 μm wide, ~10 mm high parallel microbeams of hard, broad-‘‘white’’-spectrum x rays (~50–600 keV) to investigate microbeam radiation therapy (MRT) of brain tumors in infants for whom other kinds of radiotherapy are inadequate and/or unsafe. Novel physical microdosimetry (implemented with MOSFET chips in the ‘‘edge-on’’ mode) and Monte Carlo computer-simulated dosimetry are described here for selected points in the peak and valley regions of a microbeam-irradiated tissue-equivalent phantom. Such microbeam irradiation causes minimal damage to normal tissues, possible because of rapid repair of their microscopic lesions. Radiation damage from an array of parallel microbeams tends to correlate with the range of peak-valley dose ratios (PVDR). This paper summarizes comparisons of our dosimetric MOSFET measurements with Monte Carlo calculations. Peak doses at depths \u3c22 mm are 18% less than Monte Carlo values, whereas those depths \u3e22 mm and valley doses at all depths investigated (2 mm–62 mm) are within 2–13% of the Monte Carlo values. These results lend credence to the use of MOSFET detector systems in edge-on mode for microplanar irradiation dosimetry

Electric-field-induced phase-change behavior in (Bi0.5Na0.5)TiO3-BaTiO3-(K0.5Na0.5)NbO3: A combinatorial investigation

The electric-field-induced strain behavior in (1 - x - y)(Bi0.5Na0.5)TiO3-xBaTiO(3)-y(K0.5Na0.5)NbO3 electroceramics has been studied using a combinatorial technique. A stoichiometrically graded sample was produced to contain compositions across the ternary phase diagram between the two end-member components of 0.93(Bi0.5Na0.5)TiO3-0.07BaTiO(3) and 0.86(Bi0.5Na0.5)TiO3-0-14(K0.5Na0.5)NbO3. Both composition and structural information were measured simultaneously during the application of electric fields using secondary Xray fluorescence and high-energy X-ray microdiffraction, respectively. An initial electric-field-induced distortion from the pseudo-cubic structure is seen across all compositions, while those with a greater concentration of BaTiO3 also undergo an electric-field-induced phase transformation. The microstructural contribution to the macroscopic strain within the 0.93(Bi0.5Na0.5)TiO3-0.07BaTiO(3) end member is quantified at a field strength of 5.5 kV mm(-1); 0.08% and 0.11% of the measured macroscopic strain of 0.4% is contributed by the induced ferroelastic domain texture and the volumetric strain associated with the electric-field-induced phase transformation, respectively.close696