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

Abstract

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 TL 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 (Im) 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 (Tm) it is not affected by the type of irradiation used at the same dose while the maximum TL intensity (Im) 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.