Doses near the surface in high-energy x-ray beams

In an irradiation with a high-energy x-ray beam, the absorbed dose near the surface is the combined result of incident contaminating electrons and phantom-generated electrons. We describe an experimental method to characterize these processes under conditions of longitudinal electron disequilibrium but lateral equilibrium. The equilibrium dose at large depths is extrapolated back towards the surface and compared with measured doses. The extrapolation uses an expression that is based on Monte Carlo-calculated kerma values. The technique was applied to a 6-MV and a 25-MV x-ray beam. The dose from phantom-generated electrons increased exponentially with depth from zero at the surface. The dose from contaminating electrons decreased rapidly with depth with an attenuation coefficient that was approximately equal to the corresponding coefficient for the increase of dose from phantom-generated electrons. The surface dose from contaminating electrons increased linearly with the side of the square field at 6 MV but an error-function agreed better with the data at 25 MV.