Bj. Tarte et al., DEVELOPMENT OF A CCD ARRAY IMAGING-SYSTEM FOR MEASUREMENT OF DOSE DISTRIBUTIONS IN DOPED AGAROSE GELS, Medical physics, 24(9), 1997, pp. 1521-1525
An imaging system for agarose gel sections has been investigated for a
pplications in rapid two-dimensional radiation dosimetry. The imaging
system, with white light illumination and CCD camera detection, was de
signed for measurement of the radiation-induced optical density change
s in iron-and xylenol orange dye-doped agarose gels. The performance o
f the imaging system was compared with that of a laser scanning system
for the gels and with the accepted dosimetry standard, the ionization
chamber. In measurement of beam profiles of two therapeutic radiation
fields, relative dose values from the CCD camera imaging system were
on average within 3% (ranging from 0.005% to 7.5%) of values recorded
with a parallel plate ionization chamber. In comparison with the laser
scanner, the CCD camera imaging system provided comparable spatial re
solution and an increased rate of data acquisition, although a consist
ently reduced signal to noise ratio was observed. Suggestions for impr
oving the camera imaging technique include noise reduction through cam
era cooling and further frame averaging. (C) 1997 American Association
of Physicists in Medicine.