Angular correction in reconstruction of electron spectra from depth dose distributions

Techniques for reconstruction of electron spectra from the depth-dose curves used to date have ignored the angular distribution of incident electrons scattered at large angles. The approximation adopted is to employ a database of monoenergetic depth-dose curves generated for normal incidence of electrons at the surface. This approximation is acceptable for direct electrons with small angular spread. However, electrons scattered from the treatment head and collimating system may have large average angles of incidence which affects the depth-dose distribution significantly at shallow depths by increasing energy deposition close to the surface. We show that ignoring the electron incident angular distribution leads to systematic errors in the low energy region of reconstructed electron spectra. We propose a simple 1-D model to correct for these systematic errors using only electron angular distribution at the central beam axis. This model provides reconstructed spectra in excellent agreement with Monte Carlo simulation in the low energy region.