Film dosimetry for the junction region of four compensated photon beams

A set of four 4 MV photon beam compensators were produced, one for each field of a Hodgkins Disease treatment plan. The resultant dose profiles at various depths were measured by an ion chamber in water and by Kodak X-Omat V film in a Solid Water phantom, and compared to the doses calculated by a GE RT/Plan treatment planning computer. After normalisation and correction for the film's non-linear dose response, the film and ion chamber results compared well with each other. They both showed cold spots of 80% in the junction region of the four fields which were not shown on the computed isodose plan. Film dosimetry is faster than ion chamber dosimetry and is shown to be accurate enough to use for measuring the dose uniformity of compensated beams.