Kim S, Palta J R, Zhu T C
Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, USA.
Phys Med Biol. 1998 Jun;43(6):1593-604. doi: 10.1088/0031-9155/43/6/017.
The equivalent field relationship between square and circular fields for the head scatter factor was evaluated at the source plane. The method was based on integrating the head scatter parameter for projected shaped fields in the source plane and finding a field that produced the same ratio of head scatter to primary dose on the central axis. A value of sigma/R approximately equal to 0.9 was obtained, where sigma was one-half of the side length of the equivalent square and R was the radius of the circular field. The assumptions were that the equivalent field relationship for head scatter depends primarily on the characteristics of scatter from the flattening filter, and that the differential scatter-to-primary ratio of scatter from the flattening filter decreases linearly with the radius, within the physical radius of the flattening filter. Lam and co-workers showed empirically that the area-to-perimeter ratio formula, when applied to an equivalent square formula at the flattening filter plane, gave an accurate prediction of the head scatter factor. We have analytically investigated the validity of the area-to-perimeter ratio formula. Our results support the fact that the area-to-perimeter ratio formula can also be used as the equivalent field formula for head scatter at the source plane. The equivalent field relationships for wedge and tertiary collimator scatter were also evaluated.
