Program Information
Polarity Effects in Small Volume Ionization Chambers in Small Fields
V Arora1*, D Mathew2 , S Tanny3 , E Parsai4 , N Sperling5 , (1) University of Toledo Medical Center,Toledo,OH, (2) University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, (3) SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse , NY, (4) University of Toledo Medical Center, Toledo, OH, (5) University of Toledo Medical Center, Sylvania, OH
Presentations
SU-G-BRB-12 (Sunday, July 31, 2016) 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM Room: Ballroom B
Purpose:Dosimetric quantities such as the polarity correction factor (Ppol) are important parameters for determining the absorbed dose and can influence the choice of dosimeter. Ppol has been shown to depend on beam energy, chamber design, and field size. This study is to investigate the field size and detector orientation dependence of Ppol in small fields for several commercially available micro-chambers.
Methods:We evaluate the Exradin A26, Exradin A16, PTW 31014, PTW 31016, and two prototype IBA CC-01 micro-chambers in both horizontal and vertical orientations. Measurements were taken at 10cm depth and 100cm SSD in a Wellhofer BluePhantom2. Measurements were made at square fields of 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.2, 1.4, 2.0, 2.4, 3.0, and 5.0 cm on each side using 6MV with both ± 300VDC biases. PPol was evaluated as described in TG-51, reported using -300VDC bias for Mraw. Ratios of PPol measured in the clinical field to the reference field are presented.
Results:A field size dependence of Ppol was observed for all chambers, with increased variations when mounted vertically. The maximum variation observed in PPol over all chambers mounted horizontally was <1%, and occurred at different field sizes for different chambers. Vertically mounted chambers demonstrated variations as large as 3.2%, always at the smallest field sizes.
Conclusion:Large variations in Ppol were observed for vertically mounted chambers compared to horizontal mountings. Horizontal mountings demonstrated a complicated relationship between polarity variation and field size, probably relating to differing details in each chambers construction. Vertically mounted chambers consistently demonstrated the largest PPol variations for the smallest field sizes. Measurements obtained with a horizontal mounting appear to not need significant polarity corrections for relative measurements, while those obtained using a vertical mounting should be corrected for variations in PPol.
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