Recent Advances and Clinical Applications of Plastic Scintillators in the Field of Radiation Therapy

Abstract

Within the last three decades, a lot of interest focused on the development of plastic scintillators as new detectors for clinical applications for radiation therapy. During the period of 1990–2000, following the thesis work of Beddar (A.S. Beddar, Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1990) [1], most of the studies focused on a further and deeper characterization of these new detectors, including optical light guides and the mechanisms of the light generated in these media. Between 2010–2020, the interest shifted to refining the designs of these detectors for specific application geared toward radiotherapy treatment machine calibrations, small field dosimetry, low and high dose rate brachytherapy and small field dosimetry. During this decade most of these studies were led by two groups, one at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Sam Beddar) and l’Universite Laval (Luc Beaulieu) collaborating with each other and carrying the work in their labs with the hope to bring these detectors to the market. During the last decade (2010–2020), the medical physics community witnessed an explosion of interest in the use of plastic scintillators in the field and many groups all over the world started studying and utilizing plastic scintillation detectors (PSDs) for additional applications which included in vivo dosimetry for brachytherapy, external beam radiation therapy, and proton therapy. In this chapter, the authors tried to cover the most important work and phase that PSDs witnessed with an emphasis on the latest advances that occurred in the field of radiation therapy. We also predict that inorganic plastic scintillators (ISDs) will gain interest in the next decade, especially in brachytherapy applications.