A multichannel dosimeter based on scintillating fibers for medical applications

Dosimetry with plastic scintillator is an interesting alternative for the m easurement of the absorbed dose. A scintillator does barely disturb the rad iation held due to its mass absorption coefficients which is water-equivale nt in a wide range of energies. Furthermore, plastic scintillation dosimete rs provide a fast and direct reading of the measured value combined with a high-spatial resolution. In the set-up described so far, the light produced by the scintillators was transported via light-guides to single-channel or multi-channel photomultipliers to be transformed into an electric current read out by pico-amperemeters. The use of photomultipliers becomes expensiv e and complicated for a dosimeter system with many parallel channels. For s uch applications, an image intensifier coupled to a CCD is a simpler approa ch which can read out some 80 fiber in parallel CM. Garg, Konzeption, Aufba u and Test eines Vielkanal-Dosimeters mit scintillierenden Fasern, WUB-DIS 96-17, Universitat Wuppertal, 1996 and LM. Gregor, Fin Vielkanaldosimeter m it szintillierenden Fasern-Klinische Messungen bei Energien oberhalb 1 MeV, WU D 98-14, Universitat Wuppertal, 1998]. In this note, the design and the first successful measurements of a prototype set-up are described. (C) 200 0 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.