WEARABLE ORGANIC RADIATION DETECTORS FOR REAL-TIME AND IN SITU DOSE MONITORING DURING PROTON THERAPY

Organic devices offer crucial properties able to fulfill the requests needed for the development of wearable sensors to be employed in the medical field. For example, there is an increasing demand of detecting systems optimized for the accurate in-situ and real-time recording and spatial mapping of the radiation delivered to a patient during a cancer-treatment plan. Organic materials, unlike traditional inorganic semiconductors, offer unique properties: the possibility to realize flexible, large area and low-power devices, and moreover their chemical composition makes them human tissue equivalent in terms of radiation absorption. Here, we present the results achieved by a fully-organic indirect detector in which a flexible Organic Photo-Transistor based on DNTT has been coupled with a plastic scintillator based on polysiloxane. The device has been characterized under proton beams at different energies to reproduce the real irradiation protocols delivered during treatments for prostate cancer. The detector exhibits excellent detecting performances even bent down to a curvature radius of 0.5 mm and at low operation voltages (V = -1 V). Such results confirm its reliability as a personal and wearable dosimeter with high comfort and low risk for the user.