Measurement of backscattered radiation from secondary collimator jaws into the beam monitor chamber from a dual energy linear accelerator.

Abstract

The photons and electrons backscattered from the upper and lower secondary collimator jaws give rise to a significant increase in the ion charge measured by the monitor chamber, and this increase varies between different accelerators. We have studied the effect of backscatter into the monitor chamber at 6 MV and 18 MV photon energies for the linear accelerator Clinac-1800. The variation of the output factor was first studied for variable asymmetric fields of fixed field size defined by variable right upper collimator jaw together with a variable Cerrobend block low melting point alloy, with constant lower jaw position. Output measurements were carried out at Dmax in a polystyrene phantom at the geometric center of the asymmetric field. The backscatter radiation effect was also analyzed applying a pair of 20 x 20 x 7.5 cm Cerrobend alloy blocks with 6.0 mm diameter pin-holes in the center aligned telescopically with the field defining light beam. The ion chamber with build-up cap was placed at 25 cm behind the second pin-hole. The in air measurements were made varying upper and lower collimators individually and together. For comparison, a similar study was conducted in a Theratron-780C cobalt-60 beam. In the asymmetric field experiment it was noticed that till the collimator jaw crosses the midline, the output factor is almost constant for 6 and 18 MV photon beams. For extreme field asymmetry, the decreases in output factor were 3.2% and 4.3% for 6 and 18 MV, respectively. The telescopic experiment demonstrated 4.0% and 3.9% reduction in output factor for 6 and 18 MV beams when only the upper jaws were varied. Field definition by the lower jaws only reduced the output factor by 3.3% and 3% for 6 and 18 MV photon beams. For square fields achieved by both the jaws, the output factor variation was similar to that achieved with the upper collimator for both energies. Cobalt-60 measurements with the telescopic arrangement did not show significant dependency of output with field variation, provided that the field-dependent scatter from source capsule and collimator jaws is excluded. From this study a maximum reduction of 4% and 4.3% in dose delivery was observed for 6 MV and 18 MV photon beams due to backscattered radiation originating mainly from upper collimator reaching the beam monitor chamber. For asymmetric fields it is felt that direct output measurement is more reliable in order to avoid errors in output factor due to radiation backscattered from the collimator jaws into beam monitor chamber.