DOSIMETRY WITH THE ABILITY TO DISTINGUISH PULSED AND NON-PULSED DOSE CONTRIBUTIONS

Abstract

Abstract The concept of an active dosimetry system for pulsed radiation dose rate measurements is presented. Real-time distinction of pulsed and non-pulsed radiation contributions is based on the time structure of a single interaction. A fast tissue equivalent plastic scintillator is exploited to minimize the pile-up effect influence on absorbed energy measurements. Being connected to a fully digital signal processing board, the detector creates an active dosimetry system with adjustable parameters. With this system, absorbed dose rate measurements were carried out in a photon field with a time structure mimicking a radiotherapeutic beam, but also in the presence of a constant radiation field. Measurements show a linear dependence of a pulsed radiation contribution on the accelerator current in the investigated range of the total dose rate up to 8 μGy h−1. While increasing the accelerator current by 1 μA, the pulsed radiation dose rate grows by (26.2 ± 0.9) nGy h−1 when considering pile-up events.