Portal dosimetry using x-ray film: an experimental and computational study.

To evaluate the accuracy and precision of relative portal dosimetry using x-ray film, we compared the radiation doses measured by x-ray film and by an ion chamber at various portal planes that were 0 to 50 cm behind an 18 cm thick phantom. In addition, we calculated photon spectra at the measurement planes by using the Monte Carlo particle transport technique. The experiments showed that the film usually measured relative doses to within 5% of the measurements by the ion chamber and that the errors were associated with the changes in the spectra of photon energy fluence at portal planes. The relative magnitude of low-energy fluence in the photon fluence spectrum and its variance across the portal plane caused the film response to differ from the ion-chamber response especially with lead screen on top of film in the film cassette. Relative film dosimetry may be improved to accuracy of better than 2% by using solid water or other tissue equivalent cassettes.

A new approach to film dosimetry for high energy photon beams: lateral scatter filtering.

A method of film dosimetry for high energy photon beams is proposed which reduces the required film calibration exposures to a set of films obtained for a small radiation field size and shallow depth (6 cm x 6 cm at 5 cm depth). It involves modification of a compression type polystyrene film phantom to include thin lead foils parallel to the vertical film plane at approximately 1 cm from both sides of the film emulsion. The foils act as high atomic number filters which remove low energy Compton scatter photons that otherwise would cause the film sensitivity to change with field size and depth. The proposed method is best described as "lateral scatter filtering." To validate the proposed method, central axis depth doses and isodose curves for a 4 MV photon beam were determined from films exposed within the modified phantom and the results compared with ionization chamber measurements. When no lateral filtering was used, for field sizes of 6 cm x 6 cm and 25 cm x 25 cm, this comparison demonstrated up to a 65% difference between film and ionization chamber central axis depth dose measurements. When using the lateral scatter filtering technique, less than a 4% difference was observed for these field sizes.