In their study “Dosimetric characterization of a single crystal diamond detector in X-ray beams for preclinical research” Severin Kampfer, Nathan Cho Stephanie E. Combs, Jan J.Wilkens, investigated a single crystal diamond detector, the microDiamond detector from PTW, concerning the particular requirements in the set-up and energy range used in small animal radiotherapy research (around 220 kV).
They tested it to find out the minimal required pre-irradiation dose, the dose linearity, dose rate dependency and the angular response as well as usability in the small animal radiation research platform, SARRP.
For a stable signal in the range of energies used in the study, they found a required pre-irradiation dose of 10 Gy. The dose linearity and dose rate dependence measurements showed a very good performance of the microDiamond detector. Regarding the effect of angular dependency, the variation of the response signal is less than 0.5% within the first 15° of the polar angle.
In the azimuthal angle, however, there are differences in detector response up to 20%, depending on the range of energies used in the study. In addition, we compared the detector to a radiosensitive film for a profile measurement of a 5 × 5 mm2 irradiation field. Both methods showed a good accordance with the field size, however, the film has a steeper dose gradient in the penumbra region but also a higher noise than the microDiamond detector.
They demonstrated that the microDiamond detector is a useful measurement tool for small animal RT research due to its small size. Nevertheless, it seems to be very important to verify the response of the detector in the given set-up and energy range.
This Xstrahl In Action was adapted from a article found on a National Library of Medicine website.
