Potential application of pure silica optical flat fibers for radiation therapy dosimetry

Pure silica optical flat fibers (FF) have been proposed as the basis for a novel radiation sensor by the measurement of the thermoluminescence (TL) produced. In this paper the 17, performance of the FFs were studied. Using a linear accelerator (LINAC) delivering doses in the range 0.2-10.0 Gy, the TL dosimetric glow curves of the FFs were studied with respect to 6 MeV electron and 6 MV photon beams. When exposed to 6 MeV electron irradiation, the pure silica FFs displayed a supralinear response starting from 2 Gy up to 10.0 Gy. While for 6 MV photon irradiation, the FFs shows linear characteristic (f(D) = 1) nearly up to 2 Gy. The TL intensity (I-m) of the main peak of FFs is 1.5 times higher for 6 MeV electron beams than for 6 MV photon beams. The maximum peak temperature (T-m) it is not affected by the type of irradiation used at the same dose while the maximum TL intensity (I-m) was found to be dependent on the type of radiation used. Overall results indicate that the pure silica FFs can be used as radiation sensors in the high-dose therapy dosimetry. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Thermoluminescence response of flat optical fiber subjected to 9 MeV electron irradiations

We describe the efforts of finding a new thermoluminescent (TL) media using pure silica flat optical fiber (FF). The present study investigates the dose response, sensitivity, minimum detectable dose and glow curve of FF subjected to 9 MeV electron irradiations with various dose ranges from 0 Gy to 2.5 Gy. The above-mentioned TL properties of the FF are compared with commercially available TLD-100 rods. The TL measurements of the TL media exhibit a linear dose response over the delivered dose using a linear accelerator. We found that the sensitivity of TLD-100 is markedly 6 times greater than that of FF optical fiber. The minimum detectable dose was found to be 0.09 mGy for TLD-100 and 8.22 mGy for FF. Our work may contribute towards the development of a new dosimeter for personal monitoring purposes. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved