Illuminating the future of radiotherapy: 3D printed scintillation detectors

塑料散热器是接近理想的辐射探测器。它们在暴露于辐射时产生光，并且可以用光学读取器收集光。它们在放射治疗和粒子物理学中用于高能X射线或粒子检测是常见的。到目前为止，这些探测器还没有充分发挥其潜力，部分原因是形状和设计上的限制。塑料发泡剂可以以标准形式如板、立方体、圆柱体、球体或纤维市售。生产高质量的制冷剂是一个耗时的过程，需要专门的专业知识，空间和设备。通常，用户将必须按购买的方式应用加湿器。如果需要定制的形状或光输出特性，购买可能会非常昂贵。 3D打印技术的最新进展已经导致生产了无数相对低成本的消费级打印机。3D打印非常适合快速制造独特的最终产品或具有定制或复杂几何形状的小批量产品。用户可以快速创建复杂的形状，否则将是困难的，昂贵的，耗时的传统技术生产。我们的目标是应用可访问的3D打印解决方案，提供具有定制设计的形状和光输出特性的高质量和负担得起的塑料照明器。我们的直接应用是在放射治疗过程中使用塑料闪烁器来阅读患者的辐射剂量，即所谓的体内剂量。放射治疗在患者来到诊所之前经过仔细的计划，检查和验证。尽管如此，一旦治疗开始，通常不直接监测患者的辐射剂量，其可以随着患者位置、解剖结构变化或治疗单元性能的无意偏差而变化。我们希望将3D打印照明器集成到患者在治疗期间佩戴的3D打印设备中，并读取辐射产生的光。这种常规的体内测量将防止放射治疗中的事故，确保预期剂量被递送，并且随着时间的推移，用于为临床医生提供关于结果与实际剂量之间的关系的宝贵信息。该项目的研究和开发在医学以外的其他领域也具有很高的价值。这项新技术可以为粒子探测领域开辟新的可能性。一个成功的3D打印塑料闪烁体探测器可以为该技术在探测器制造中的更广泛应用铺平道路，这可能会动摇高能物理领域，其中大规模定制设计的探测器对于大多数应用来说都非常昂贵。这种可访问的大规模和定制设计的探测器在中微子探测中具有直接的应用。

Plastic scintillators are near-ideal radiation detectors. They produce light when exposed to radiation, and the light can be collected with an optical reader. Their use is common in radiation therapy and particle physics for high energy x-ray or particle detections. To date, these detectors have not reached their full potential partly because of the limitations in shape and design. Plastic scintillators are available commercially in standard forms such as slabs, cubes, cylinders, spheres, or fibres. Production of good quality scintillators is a time-consuming process that requires specialized expertise, space, and equipment. Typically, a user would have to apply the scintillators as purchased. If customized shapes or light-output characteristics are desired, the purchase could be prohibitively costly.  Recent advances in 3D printing technology have resulted in producing a myriad of relatively low-cost consumer-grade printers. 3D printing is ideal for the rapid manufacturing of unique end products or small batches of products with bespoke or complex geometries. The users can rapidly create complex shapes that would otherwise be difficult, costly, and time-consuming to produce by traditional techniques. We aim to apply accessible 3D printing solutions to delivering high-quality and affordable plastic scintillators with custom-designed shape and light-output characteristics. Our immediate application is to use plastic scintillators for reading patients' radiation dose during radiation therapy treatments, the so-called in-vivo dose. Radiation therapy treatments are carefully planned, checked, and verified before the patient comes to the clinic. Still, once the treatment begins, there is most often no direct monitoring of the patient's radiation dose, which can be variable with the patient position, anatomical change, or inadvertent deviations in the treatment unit's performance. We want to integrate 3D printed scintillators into 3D printed devices worn by patients during treatments and read the light produced by radiation. Such routine in-vivo measurements would prevent accidents in radiation therapy, ensure that the intended dose is delivered, and, over time, serve to provide clinicians with invaluable information about the relationships between the outcomes and actual doses. The research and development in this project are also highly valuable in other fields besides medicine. This new technique could open up new possibilities for the field of particle detection. A successful 3D-printed plastic scintillator detector could pave the way for broader use of this technology in detector building, which could shake up the field of high-energy physics where large-scale custom-designed detectors have been prohibitively expensive for most applications. Such accessible large-scale and custom-designed detectors have immediate applications in detection of neutrinos.