Energy response of imaging plates to radiation beams from standard beta sources, ortho-voltage and cobalt-60 units and linear accelerators.

摘要

The response to different types of radiation beams of commercial imaging plates used for diagnostic computed radiography has been investigated in this work. Imaging plates are designed with a phosphor layer which after been irradiated; information is stored in the form of photostimulable luminescence (PSL) centers. Initial measurements of the dose distribution of a radioactive stent with the imaging plates showed similar results to those with radiochromic films, but with much shorter exposure time due to their higher sensitivity. In order to investigate further their response, the imaging plates were irradiated with calibrated beams from: standard beta sources, orthovoltage and Co-60 units and therapy linear accelerator. Initially it was found that the energy to create the storage centers (generation efficiency) when irradiated with the three standard beta sources (225 keV to 2.28 MeV) was the same. For the rest of the calibrated beams an in house reader system was built in order to perform the bleaching of the plates with a He-Ne laser (632.8 nm) and to measure the absolute number of the emitted PSL photons (storage centers produced). Bleaching curves were then obtained for different exposure times for each beam. From the graph of the calculated area under the bleaching curves (total number of storage center) versus the absorbed dose to the phosphor layer it was possible to calculate the energy to create the storage centers (generation efficiency) for photon and electron beams. The dose to the phosphor layer was calculated in the case of the electron beams following a scaling procedure, while in the case of the photon beams Monte Carlo simulations were performed. For the photons beams the measurement of the generation efficiency energy of 126 ± 8% eV per PSL storage center, coincide with measurements using a different approach (∼148 eV) by previous investigators. The generation efficiency for the electron beam was 807 ± 3% eV, no reference was found in the literature for comparison purposes. Finally it is important to mention that the dynamic range of the imaging plates measured in this work is about 10 orders of magnitude (10−7–10 3 Gy) where the response is still linear.