Pencil beam approach for correcting the energy dependence artifact in film dosimetry for IMRT verification

The higher sensitivity to low-energy scattered photons of radiographic film compared to water can lead to significant dosimetric error when the beam quality varies significantly within a field. Correcting for this artifact will provide greater accuracy for intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) verification dosimetry. A procedure is developed for correction of the film energy-dependent response by creating a pencil beam kernel within our treatment planning system to model the film response specifically. Film kernels are obtained from EGSnrc Monte Carlo simulations of the dose distribution from a 1 mm diameter narrow beam in a model of the film placed at six depths from 1.5 to 40 cm in polystyrene and solid water phantoms. Kernels for different area phantoms (50 x 50 cm2 and 25 x 25 cm2 polystyrene and 30 x 30 cm2 solid water) are produced. The Monte Carlo calculated kernel is experimentally verified with film, ion chamber and thermoluminescent dosimetry (TLD) measurements in polystyrene irradiated by a narrow beam. The kernel is then used in convolution calculations to, predict the film response in open and IMRT fields. A 6 MV photon beam and Kodak XV2 film in a polystyrene phantom are selected to test the method as they are often used in practice and can result in large energy-dependent artifacts. The difference in dose distributions calculated with the film kernel and the water kernel is subtracted from film measurements to obtain a practically film artifact free IMRT dose distribution for the Kodak XV2 film. For the points with dose exceeding 5 cGy (11% of the peak dose) in a large modulated field and a film measurement inside a large polystyrene phantom at depth of 10 cm, the correction reduces the fraction of pixels for which the film dose deviates from dose to water by more than 5% of the mean film dose from 44% to 6%.