Radio-fluorogenic (RFG) gels become permanently fluorescent when exposed to high-energy radiation with the intensity of the emission proportional to the local dose of radiation absorbed. An apparatus is described, FluoroTome 1, that is capable of taking a series of tomographic images (thin slices) of the fluorescence of such an irradiated RFG gel on-site and within minutes of radiation exposure. These images can then be compiled to construct a 3D movie of the dose distribution within the gel. The historical development via a laboratory-bench prototype to a readily transportable, user-friendly apparatus is described. Instrumental details and performance tests are presented.

We have filled a 24 mm diameter glass sphere with a transparent polymer-gel that is radio-fluorogenic, i.e., it becomes (permanently) fluorescent when irradiated, with an intensity proportional to the local dose deposited. The gel consists of > 99.9% tertiary-butyl acrylate (TBA), pre-polymerized to ~15% conversion, and ~100 ppm maleimido-pyrene (MPy). Its dimensions and physical properties are close to those of the vitreous body of the human eye. We have irradiated the gel with a 3 mm diameter, 200 kVp X-ray beam with a dose rate of ~1 Gy/min. A three-dimensional (3D) (video) view of the beam within the gel has been constructed from tomographic images obtained by scanning the sample through a thin sheet of UV light. To minimize optical artefacts, the cell was immersed in a square tank containing a refractive-index-matching medium. The 20-80% penumbra of the beam was determined to be ~0.4 mm. This research was a preparatory investigation of the possibility of using this method to monitor the millimetre diameter proton pencil beams used in ocular radiotherapy.

We have measured the dose, D, and dose rate, D', dependences of the radiation-induced change in optical absorption of four radiochromic films currently used for (2D) dosimetry: GafChromic® types EBT3, MD-V3, HD-V2 and HD-810. We have irradiated the films using two ⁶⁰Co γ-ray sources with dose rates of ~2 and ~30 Gy/min and a 200 kVp X-ray source with dose rates from ~0.2 to ~1.0 Gy/min. The 48-bit RGB image files of the films, obtained using an Epson V700 flatbed scanner, were color-channel separated and the red, green and blue pixel levels, P(D), were determined using ImageJ software. The relationship P(D)/P(0)=[1+hD/m]/[1+D/m] is found to provide a good description of the dose dependence for all four films at all dose rates. The parameter h is the “plateau level” of P(D)/P(0) approached at high doses, i.e. P(∞)/P(0). The parameter m is the “median-dose” for which P(D)/P(0)(1+h)/2 which is the half point in the dynamic range of the particular film. The best-fit values of m over the dose rate range from ~0.2 to ~25 Gy/min using the red pixels were 1.42±0.03, 11.1±0.4, 63.6±0.9 and 60.6±1.6 Gy for EBT3, MD-V3, HD-V2 and HD-810 respectively. Using the green pixels the median dose is 1.8 times larger for the first 3 films and 2.5 times larger for HD-810. The blue pixels are considered unsuitable for dosimetry because of the large value of h (>0.4) and the resulting small dynamic range.