Extraction of electron beam dose parameters from EBT2 film data scored in a mini phantom

Quality assurance of medical linear accelerators includes dosimetric parameter measurement of therapeutic electron beams e.g. relative dose at a depth of 80% (R₈₀). This parameter must be within a tolerance of 0.2 cm of the declared value. Cumbersome water tank measurements can be regarded as a benchmark to measure electron depth dose curves. A mini-phantom was designed and built, in which a strip of GAFCHROMIC® EBT2 film could be encased tightly for electron beam depth dose measurement. Depth dose data were measured for an ELEKTA Sl25 MLC, ELEKTA Precise, and ELEKTA Synergy (Elekta Oncology Systems, Crawley, UK) machines. The electron beam energy range was between 4 and 22 MeV among the machines. A 10 × 10 cm² electron applicator with 95 cm source-surface-distance was used on all the machines. 24 h after irradiation, the EBT2 film strips were scanned on Canon CanoScan N670U scanner. Afterwards, the data were analysed with in-house developed software that entailed optical density to dose conversion, and optimal fitting of the PDD data to de-noise the raw data. From the PDD data R₈₀ values were solved for and compared with acceptance values. A series of tests were also carried out to validate the use of the scanner for film Dosimetry. These tests are presented in this study. It was found that this method of R₈₀ evaluation was reliable with good agreement with benchmark water tank measurements using a commercial parallel plate ionization chamber as the radiation detector. The EBT2 film data yielded R₈₀ values that were on average 0.06 cm different from benchmark water tank measured R₈₀ values.