Development of novel water equivalent liquid scintillator

摘要

Scintillation dosimeters are high efficiency and resolution devices for 3D dose radiotherapy measurement. Water is the best tissue equivalent material for most types of radiation, thus water-equivalent scintillator is the preferred scintillator for radiotherapy dose measurement. This research paper describes a new method of preparing water-equivalent liquid scintillators (LS). In this study, we first calculated the approximate ratio of each LS component by empirical formula and then used the Monte Carlo program Geant4 to optimize the concentration ratio of the water-equivalent LS. The newly prepared LS was doped with a high-density solvent containing silicon and oxygen. Experimental results showed that the newly developed LS had good water equivalence in different depths, both at high energy (6 MV) and low energy (50 kVp similar to 225 kVp). In addition, its luminous efficiency was superior compared to the commercial ULTIMA Gold (TM) LS. In conclusion, the Monte Carlo simulation was effective in predicting each component ratio in the water-equivalent LS. Furthermore, the newly prepared LS had excellent luminescence properties and water equivalence and is a potential 3D dose detector.