Use of an Optical Fibre based Temperature Sensor for Radiotherapy Dosimetry

Abstract

This paper presents preliminary results on the evaluation of a novel optical fibre based sensor for the measurement of incident ionising radiation. The sensor is designed to be extremely sensitive to variations in temperature and the hypothesis being explored is that incident ionising radiation will generate some degree of heat in the sensor itself and its surrounding environment, which may in turn be measured with high resolution. Experiments were conducted on a radiotherapy linear accelerator for two clinical doses of 100 MU at 6 MV and 10 MV, in addition to this one non-clinical dose of 10,204 MU at 10 MV was performed. Results indicated that the sensor in its current configuration, while temperature sensitive, was unsuitable for measuring clinical levels of radiotherapy incident ionising radiation and further work is required to achieve the desired outcome.