Estimation of absorbed doses in high energy photon and electron beams from a clinical linear accelerator using extrapolation chamber

Calibration of photon and electron beams from a medical linear accelerator is carried out using absorbed dose calibrated gas cavity chambers in water phantoms and applying different international protocols. Bohm and Schneider developed extrapolation chamber (EC), which are specially designed parallel plate ionization chambers capable of measuring accurately the differential specific charge (dq/dm) by varying air mass in cavity by precise control of electrode separation. Zankowski and Podgorsak reported the efficacy of specially built extrapolation chambers as an integral part of po-lystyrene and solid water phantom to measure absorbed in cobalt-60 gamma beam, 4 to 18 MV x-rays and for 6 to 22 MeV electron beams. Mehenna Arib3 reported their experience in performing absolute dosimetry with high energy photon beams using a commercially available Perspex embedded extrapolation chamber and compared with water measurements. If realization of absorbed dose using these chambers is achieved from first principles, this chamber could become a departmental standard. In our institution we do not have standard cobalt-60 machine for determination of Nd, water factors for thimble chambers and no secondary standards laboratory in this country for traceability of our beam level dosimeters. Therefore we investigated the role of extrapolation chamber (EC) for measurement of absorbed doses with clinical radiotherapy beams