Feasibility of dose assessment in radiological diagnostic equipments using Ce-doped radio-luminescent optical fibers

A mammography system, a conventional radiological equipment and a CT scanner operated at 120 kV were used to investigate the reproducibility, the sensitivity and the response linearity to a variety of X-ray tube current, high-voltage and dose values of a radio-luminescent dosimeter based on a Ce-doped optical fiber. simeter reproducibility was very close to the ionization chamber reproducibility. The detector sensitivity was also calculated in order to evaluate the minimum detectable dose rate and a minimum detectable dose, considering a sampling time of 10 ms. rves have a very good linear course with a correlation coefficient greater than 0.999. ber sensitivity (counts per unit dose) as a function of the X-ray tube voltage obtained with the conventional X-ray equipment decreases by increasing the photon energy, losing about 10% of its value from 60 to 120 kV. Also for CT scanner, the fiber responses are very good and reproducible. w dosimetric system is complementary to usual dosimetry systems as ionization chambers, since it is mostly suitable for in vivo and on-line dosimetry. Scintillating fibers are very safe because they are not electrically powered and moreover they assure very high spatial resolution due to their reduced dimensions.