Small field: Dosimetry in electron disequilibrium region

Abstract

Small fields are more commonly used for radiation therapy because of the development of IMRT, stereotactic radiosurgery, and other special equipments such as Cyberknife and Tomotherapy. The dosimetry in the sub-centimeter field can result in substantial uncertainties because of the presence of electron disequilibrium due to the large dose gradients in the field. It is further complicated by the introduction of various radiation detectors, which usually perturb the conditions of disequilibrium. Hence additional corrections are required to maintain the dosimetric accuracy previously achieved for standard radiation dosimetry. A review of small field dosimetry provides some insights into the methods to characterize the detector convolution kernel and other methods to characterize detector perturbation effect. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.