Quantification of the absorbed dose in 3D by means of advanced optical diagnostics based on structured illumination

Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to present a novel optical diagnostic tool that corrects for undesired contribution of multiply scattered light, thus opening up for e.g. quantitative optical CT measurements of opaque samples. The approach is based on a technique called Structured Illumination (SI), which is commonly employed within microscopic imaging to enhance the depth-resolution. The concept of SI applies for many types of source-detector arrangements and the configuration employed in this paper relies on side-scattering detection. A nPAG polymer gel phantom was irradiated using 6 MV beam. Three-dimensional information was obtained by translating the sample perpendicular to the direction of light, thus sequentially probing different sections. These were then stacked together to form a 3D representation of the sample. By altering the polarization of the laser light during the data acquisition it was discovered that the aggregates responsible for the scattering of light followed Rayleigh scattering, implying that their individual sizes are smaller than, or in the order of, 500 nm.