Abstract
The photoelectric device of a scintillation dosimeter converts photons produced by radiation into an electrical signal. Its features directly determine the overall performance of the dosimeter. For a plastic scintillation fiber dosimeter (PSFD) with a current readout mode, systematic studies of the stability and light-dose response were performed for the photomultiplier tube (PMT), silicon photomultiplier (SiPM), avalanche photodiode (APD), and photodiode (PD). The temperature stability, long-term stability, repeatability, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and current dose response of the PSFD with the abovementioned photoelectric devices were studied using a pulsed LED light source and the Small Animal Radiation Therapy platform. An exponential relationship between the dark/net current and temperature was obtained for all the devices. It is shown that the APD is the most sensitive device to temperature, with a current dependence on temperature reaching 6.5\(\%\,^{\circ }\hbox {C}^{-1}\) at room temperature, whereas for the other devices this dependence is always \(<{0.6}{\%\,^{\circ }\hbox {C}^{-1}}\). In terms of long-term stability, the net current of PD can change by up to 4% when working continuously for 8 h and 2% when working intermittently for 32 h, whereas for the other devices, the changes are all <1%. For the dose response, the PMT and SiPM exhibit excellent linear responses and SNRs within the range of 0.1–60 Gy/min. For the PSFD with a current readout mode, the performance of the PMT and SiPM is concluded to be better than that of the other devices in the study. In particular, the SiPM, which has a compact size, low bias voltage, and antimagnetic interference, has great advantages for further applications.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Yue Yang, Cui-Ping Yang, and Ren-Sheng Wang. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Ren-Sheng Wang, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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This work was supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2017M621818), the National Key Research and Development Project (Nos. 2017YFF0206205 and 2016YFB0501303), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51873137 and 11705123), and the Project of the State Key Laboratory of Radiation Medicine and Protection, Soochow University (No. GZN1201801).
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Yang, Y., Yang, CP., Xin, J. et al. Performance of a plastic scintillation fiber dosimeter based on different photoelectric devices. NUCL SCI TECH 32, 120 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-021-00965-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-021-00965-0