Wook Jae YOO, Jeong Ki SEO, Sang Hun SHIN, Ki-Tek HAN, Dayeong JEON, Kyoung Won JANG, Hyeok In SIM, Bongsoo LEE, and Jang-Yeon PARK^*

School of Biomedical Engineering, College of Biomedical and Health Science, Research Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Konkuk University, Chungju 380-701, Korea

(Received August 14, 2012; Revised November 5, 2012; Accepted December 19, 2012)

In this study, a fiber-optic dosimeter (FOD) was developed to measure entrance surface dose (ESD) in diagnostic radiology. We measured the scintillating lights in order to obtain ESDs, which changed with the various exposure parameters of a digital radiography (DR) system, such as tube potential, current–time product, focus-surface distance (FSD), and field size, using the fabricated FOD system. From the experimental results, the output light signals of the FOD were similar to the ESDs of the conventional semiconductor dosimeter. In conclusion, we characterized the measured ESDs as functions of exposure parameters by using two different types of dosimeters and demonstrated that the proposed FOD using a plastic scintillating fiber and a plastic optical fiber (POF) makes it possible to measure ESDs in the energy range of diagnostic radiology. From the results of this study, it is anticipated that the FOD will be a useful dosimeter in low-energy photon applications including diagnostic radiology.

Key words: diagnostic radiology, entrance surface dose, fiber-optic dosimeter, plastic optical fiber, plastic scintillating fiber

^*E-mail address: jyparu@kku.ac.kr