Bandwidth Foundry is collaborating with the University of Sydney's Optical Fibre Technology Centre and Department of Physics, Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and industrial partner CMS Alphatech to develop an ultra-compact next-generation fibre-optic dosimeter for real-time monitoring of radiation dose in medical radiation therapy.
In treating cancer patients with radiation, a treatment regimen is prescribed with the goal of either curing the patient or controlling their disease. A constraint on the radiation dose that can be delivered is the need to avoid complications resulting from the irradiation of the surrounding normal tissues.
The fibre-optic dosimeter, consisting of a small water-equivalent plastic scintillator coupled to an optical fibre, allows accurate real-time monitoring of the radiation dose delivered, and avoids the disadvantages associated with energy dependence or perturbation of the radiation beam produced by other dosimeters.
