Comments on 'Ionization chamber volume determination and quality assurance using micro-CT imaging'

The authors of a recent paper (McNiven et al 2008 Phys. Med. Biol. 53 5029-43) measured the volume of a particular type of a small ionization chamber using CT images. Using four Exradin A1SL chambers, they find that the volume measured using CT imaging is, on average, 4.3% larger than the value derived from the chamber calibration coefficient. Although they point out that the effective chamber volume is defined by electric field lines between the collector and the chamber body, they do not estimate how the mechanical volume might differ from the effective volume. We have used a commercial software package to calculate the electric field in the cavity and we show that the field lines define a volume that is about 11% smaller than the mechanical volume. We also show that the effective volume is very sensitive to small changes in the chamber geometry near the base of the collector. We conclude that simply determining the mechanical volume without careful consideration of the electric field lines within the cavity is not a useful dosimetric technique.