Scintillating fiber dosimeter for radiotherapy

Radiotherapy, together with chemotherapy and surgery, is one of the main methods applied in the fight against cancer; in order to increase the chances of a successful radiotherapy treatment the dose delivery to the tumor and the surrounding normal tissues has to be computed with high accuracy. Traditional dosimeters are accurate but single channel (ionization chambers and diodes) or non real-time (radiographic films) devices. At present there is no device water equivalent that can perform real-time and bidimensional measurements of a dose distribution. This article describes the development of a real-time dosimeter based on scintillating fibers for photon and electron beams; the fibers are made of polystyrene, that is water equivalent and thus tissue equivalent, allowing a direct dose calculation. Three prototypes (single and multichannel) have been assembled, consisting in small scintillators coupled to white fibers that carry the light to photomultiplier tubes. In this article the prototypes and the readout electronics are described, together with the results of the measurements with electron and photon beams with energy up to 20MeV (produced by linear accelerators Varian Clinac 1800 and 2100CD).