Open AccessIs attenuation technique sensitive enough to be used to make distinction between FF and FFF spectrum of therapy linac
Author(s) -
Arpad Toth,
D Luka Dragojlovic,
V Nevena Ignjatov,
Mirjana Mikalački,
M. Krmar
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
nuclear technology and radiation protection
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.31
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 1452-8185
pISSN - 1451-3994
DOI - 10.2298/ntrp181016010t
Subject(s) - attenuation , linear particle accelerator , flattening , filter (signal processing) , energy (signal processing) , optics , photon , physics , computational physics , spectral line , computer science , beam (structure) , quantum mechanics , astronomy , computer vision
The purpose of this study was to check if attenuation analysis is sensitive enough to make a distinction between photon energy spectra of standard accelerators and accelerators operating without a field flattening filter. Attenuation measurements were performed in two operating modes of a medical linear accelerator: with a flattening filter and without it, at nominal energy of 6 MV. Numerical and Laplace transform pair methods were used for spectra reconstruction. Although the difference between two attenuation curves is very small, as expected both reconstruction techniques produce slightly softer spectra at flattening filter free mode. The most important conclusion of this pilot study is that attenuation analysis can be a sensitive tool which is able to detect spectral differences between photon beams of an accelerator operating in two regimes.