The characterization of the Advanced Markus ionization chamber for use in reference electron dosimetry in the UK.

The IPEM Code of Practice (IPEM 2003) for electron dosimetry for radiotherapy beams recommends design requirements for parallel-plate ionization chambers used to determine absorbed dose to water in an electron beam. The Classic Markus design has been found not to meet these requirements. The Advanced Markus ionization chamber has been designed to rectify the problems associated with the Classic Markus ionization chamber. The response of three Advanced Markus ionization chambers was investigated and compared to the designated chamber types. Absorbed dose to water calibration factors were derived at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) for each ionization chamber at seven electron energies in the range nominally 4-19 MeV. Investigations were carried out into chamber settling, polarity effects, ion recombination and the chamber perturbation. The response of the ionization chambers in a clinical beam was also investigated. In general all three Advanced Markus ionization chambers showed the same energy response. The magnitude of the polarity effect was typically 5% at a nominal energy of 4 MeV. There was discrepancy between the polarity measurements made at the NPL and in the clinic. The recommendation of this study is that this chamber type is not suitable for reference dosimetry in electron beams.

EURADOS database of facilities and equipment for dosimetry research in Europe.

EURADOS (European Radiation Dosimetry Group) has implemented a database of facilities and equipment for dosimetry research in the European Union. The database can be accessed freely by interested scientists via a user-friendly World Wide Web interface. Interested operators and owners of facilities can make information available to the dosimetric community by using a standardised format for information collection. The submitted data is completely in the hands of the information provider.

A small-body portable graphite calorimeter for dosimetry in low-energy clinical proton beams.

Calorimetry has been recommended and performed in proton beams for some time, but never has graphite calorimetry been used as a reference dosimeter in clinical proton beams. Furthermore, only a few calorimetry measurements have been reported in ocular proton beams. In this paper we describe the construction and performance of a small-body portable graphite calorimeter for clinical low-energy proton beams. Perturbation correction factors for the gap effect, volume averaging effect, heat transfer phenomena and impurity effect are calculated and applied in a comparison with ionization chamber dosimetry following IAEA TRS-398. The ratio of absorbed dose to water obtained from the calorimeter measurements and from the ionization measurements varied between 0.983 and 1.019, depending on the beam type and the ionization chamber calibration modality. Standard uncertainties on these values varied between 1.9% and 2.5% including a substantial contribution from the kQ values in IAEA TRS-398. The (Wair/e)p values inferred from these measurements varied between 33.6 J C(-1) and 34.9 J C(-1) with similar standard uncertainties. A number of improvements for the small-body portable graphite calorimeter and the experimental set-up are suggested for potential reduction of the uncertainties.