Dosimetric properties of Gafchromic® EBT films in medical carbon ion beams

Abstract

High spatial resolution is desired for dosimetrical verification of patient plans for radiotherapy treatments employing scanned ion beams. This is provided by Gafchromic EBT film, the ancestor of currently available EBT2 films. In this contribution, dosimetric properties of EBT films were investigated. Measurements of depth response were performed for monoenergetic fields (250 MeV/u) for different ion fluences as well as for an energy-modulated spread-out Bragg peak of 5 × 5 × 5 cm3 in 10 cm depth. The films were positioned perpendicular to the incoming carbon ion beams. The observed quenching of the response relative to the same dose of photons was quantified by the relative efficiency. In monenenergetic beams, a relative efficiency of about 0.73 was found in the plateau, 0.4 in the peak and 0.55 in the tail region. No dependence of the relative efficiency on the ion fluence was observed well beyond the clinically used levels. This gives a constant peak to plateau ratio, which is about 1.8 times lower than that for the delivered dose. In the spread-out Bragg peak, the relative efficiency was found to decrease from 0.64 to 0.54 toward the distal end. Thus when aiming for a prediction of the film response in mixed ion beams, the efficiency of the film has to be parametrized as a function of the ion type and energy over the whole ion spectrum. In addition, the relative water-equivalent range of EBT films was measured here to be 1.291 ± 0.015.