Ionization quenching correction for a 3D scintillator detector exposed to scanning proton beams

The ionization quenching phenomenon in scintillators must be corrected to obtain accurate dosimetry in particle therapy. The purpose of this study was to develop a methodology for correcting camera projection measurements of a 3D scintillator detector exposed to proton pencil beams. Birks' ionization quenching model and the energy deposition by secondary electrons (EDSE) model were used to correct the light captured by a prototype 3D scintillator detector. The detector was made of a 20 cm x 20 cm x 20 cm tank filled with liquid scintillator, and three cameras. The detector was exposed to four proton-beam energies (84.6, 100.9, 144.9, and 161.6 MeV) at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center's Proton Therapy Center. The dose and track averaged linear energy transfer (LET) were obtained using validated Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. The corrected light output was compared to the dose calculated by the MC simulation. Optical artefact corrections were used to correct for refraction at the air-scintillator interface, and image perspective. These corrections did not account for the non-orthogonal integration of data off the central axis of the image. Therefore, we compared the light output to an integrated MC dose and LET along the non-orthogonal path. After accounting for the non-orthogonal integration of the data, the corrected light output reduced the dose error at the Bragg peak region from 15% to 3% for low proton-beam energies. Overall, the doses at the Bragg peak region using the Birks' model and EDSE model were less than +/- 3% and +/- 7% of the MC dose, respectively. We have improved the application of Birks' model quenching corrections in 3D scintillators by numerically projecting the dose and LET 3D grid to camera projections. This study shows that scintillator projections can be corrected using average LET values at the central axes.