Scintillation fiber array detector for measurement of neutron beam profile

Abstract

We built and tested a detector to measure the profile of fast-neutron beams delivered by the MC50 cyclotron at the Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Science (KIRAMS). The core component of the detector is a 2 x 46 array of scintillation fibers. The light output of the scintillation fibers is transformed into a current signal by a 46-channel silicon photodiode and digitized by a current-mode signal processor. This scanning device was designed to cover a neutron beam area of 30 x 32 cm(2). The detector was tested in a neutron beam delivered by the MC50 cyclotron at KIRAMS. We demonstrate that the detector can successfully measure the neutron beam profile at various beam currents from 10 to 20 mu A. The proposed neutron beam profile detector will be useful, for example, in radiotherapy applications with neutron intensities above 10(7) Hz/cm(2). (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.