Monte Carlo simulation of the transit dosimetric response of an a-Si electronic portal imaging device

Abstract

Amorphous silicon (a-Si) electronic portal imaging devices (EPIDs) are x-ray detectors frequently used in radiotherapy imaging and dosimetry applications. EPIDs employ a copper plate and gadolinium oxysulfide phosphor screen with an array of a-Si photodiodes to indirectly detect incident radiation. In this study, a previously developed Monte Carlo (MC) model of an a-Si EPID has been extended for transit dosimetry. The GEANT4 MC toolkit was used to integrate an a-Si EPID model with two phantoms and a 6 MV x-ray source. A solid water phantom was used to simulate EPID transmission factors, field size output factors and relative dose profiles and results were compared to experimental measurements. An anthropomorphic head phantom was used to qualitatively compare simulated and measured portal images of humanoid anatomy. Calculated transmission factors and field size output factors agreed to within 2.0% and 1.9% of experimental measurements, respectively. A comparison of calculated and measured relative dose profiles yielded >98% of points passing a gamma analysis with 3%/3 mm criterion for all field sizes. The simulated anthropomorphic head phantom image shows macroscopic anatomical features and qualitatively agrees with the measured image. Results validate the suitability of the MC model for predicting EPID response in transit dosimetry.