Quenching effect in an optical fiber type small size dosimeter irradiated with 290 MeV·u^-1 carbon ions

We are developing a small size dosimeter for dose estimation in particle therapies. The developed dosimeter is an optical fiber based dosimeter mounting an radiation induced luminescence material, such as an OSL or a scintillator, at a tip. These materials generally suffer from the quenching effect under high LET particle irradiation. We fabricated two types of the small size dosimeters. They used an OSL material Eu:BaFBr and a BGO scintillator. Carbon ions were irradiated into the fabricated dosimeters at Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba (HIMAC). The small size dosimeters were set behind the water equivalent acrylic phantom. Bragg peak was observed by changing the phantom thickness. An ion chamber was also placed near the small size dosimeters as a reference. Eu:BaFBr and BGO dosimeters showed a Bragg peak at the same thickness as the ion chamber. Under high LET particle irradiation, the response of the luminescence-based small size dosimeters deteriorated compared with that of the ion chamber due to the quenching effect. We confirmed the luminescence efficiency of Eu:BaFBr and BGO decrease with the LET. The reduction coefficient of luminescence efficiency was different between the BGO and the Eu:BaFBr. The LET can be determined from the luminescence ratio between Eu:BaFBr and BGO, and the dosimeter response can be corrected. We evaluated the LET dependence of the luminescence efficiency of the BGO and Eu:BaFBr as the quenching effect. We propose and discuss the correction of the quenching effect using the signal intensity ratio of the both materials. Although the correction precision is not sufficient, feasibility of the proposed correction method is proved through basic experiments