Characteristics of a real-time radiation exposure dosimetry system using a synthetic ruby for radiotherapy

Radiotherapy-related medical accidents are frequently caused by planning problems, excessive irradiation during radiotherapy, or patient movement. This is partly because the local exposure dose cannot be directly monitored during radiotherapy. This article discusses the development of our recent real-time radiation exposure dosimetry system that uses a synthetic ruby for radiation therapy. Background noise was observed before the measurement of the short-term characteristic features. Regarding the relationship between the number of photons and dose rate, using 100 monitor units (MU)/min as the measurement value, the counts decreased by approximately 10% at 600 MU/min. A clear correlation was observed between the MU value and the number of photons (R² = 0.9987). The coefficient of variation (%CV) was less than ± 1.0% under all the irradiation conditions. Slight differences were observed between the ion chamber and the synthetic ruby dosimeters in the measurement of the percentage depth dose. However, this difference was almost matched by correcting for the Cherenkov light. Although some problems were observed with the synthetic ruby dosimeter system, our results indicate that the developed dosimeter can be used to measure the irradiation dose of patients in real time, with no significant impact on the data, as any effect would be masked by the larger effect of the ruby; however, the impact requires a detailed assessment in the future.