What Can Solid State Detectors Do for Clinical Dosimetry in Modern Radiotherapy?

The emergence of new modalities in radiation therapy, such as stereotactic radiosurgery, vascular brachytherapy, intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), proton therapy or boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT), stimulates new clinical applications of solid state detectors: thermoluminescence (TL) detectors, radiochromic dye films or alanine. New dosimetry techniques will have to be developed for dynamic radiotherapy, employing dose-integrating detectors with a high spatial resolution. A brief review of modern radiotherapy techniques, accompanied by up-to-date references to descriptions of some dosimetry approaches is given, followed by comments on the application and optimisation of TL detectors for proton beam dosimetry.