Fiber-optic Cerenkov radiation sensor for proton therapy dosimetry.

In proton therapy dosimetry, a fiber-optic radiation sensor incorporating a scintillator must undergo complicated correction processes due to the quenching effect of the scintillator. To overcome the drawbacks of the fiber-optic radiation sensor, we proposed an innovative method using the Cerenkov radiation generated in plastic optical fibers. In this study, we fabricated a fiber-optic Cerenkov radiation sensor without an organic scintillator to measure Cerenkov radiation induced by therapeutic proton beams. Bragg peaks and spread-out Bragg peaks of proton beams were measured using the fiber-optic Cerenkov radiation sensor and the results were compared with those of an ionization chamber and a fiber-optic radiation sensor incorporating an organic scintillator. From the results, we could obtain the Bragg peak and the spread-out Bragg peak of proton beams without quenching effects induced by the scintillator, and these results were in good agreement with those of the ionization chamber. We also measured the Cerenkov radiation generated from the fiber-optic Cerenkov radiation sensor as a function of the dose rate of the proton beam.