Characterization of silica-based glass for use in medical applications

Thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLD) form a very important subset of passive detector technology, for many decades enjoying widespread use in making radiation exposure assessments, not least in regard to medical applications. TLDs are available in a wide range of physical and chemical forms, the LiF-based commercial product TLD-100 being notably popular in personal and patient dose evaluations due their desirable properties such as small size, tissue equivalence, and relatively low fading. Thus said, several of the more recent TLD studies have focused on doped and undoped silica-made glass fibres, showing these to have great potential as effective dosimeters for diagnostic radiology and therapeutic dose measurements, also offering several advantages over the well-established phosphor-based Tl detectors. The latter include being water impervious, reproducible in response, of good sensitivity and offering wide dynamic range. In present study we investigate a new type of cost-effective silica-based glass, examining the characteristic of these materials, including dose response, energy response, sensitivity, and fading, with use focusing on x-ray tube clinical diagnostic applications. (author)