Comparative evaluation of Kodak EDR2 and XV2 films for verification of intensity modulated radiation therapy

Film dosimetry provides a convenient tool to determine dose distributions, especially for verification of IMRT plans. However, the film response to radiation shows a significant dependence on depth, energy and field size that compromise the accuracy of measurements. Kodak's XV2 film has a low saturation dose (∼100 cGy) and, consequently, a relatively short region of linear dose-response. The recently introduced Kodak extended range EDR2 film was reported to have a linear dose-response region extending to 500 cGy. This increased dose range may be particularly useful in the verification of IMRT plans. In this work, the dependence of Kodak EDR2 film's response on the depth, field size and energy was evaluated and compared with Kodak XV2 film. Co-60, 6 MV, 10 MV and 18 MV beams were used. Field sizes were 2x2, 6x6, 10x10, 14x14, 18x18 and 24x24 cm2. Doses for XV2 and EDR2 films were 80 cGy and 300 cGy, respectively. Optical density was converted to dose using depth-corrected sensitometric (Hurter and Driffield, or H and D) curves. For each field size, XV2 and EDR2 depth-dose curves were compared with ion chamber depth-dose curves. Both films demonstrated similar (within 1%) field size dependence. The deviation from the ion chamber for both films was small for the fields ranging from 2x2 to 10x10 cm2: ≤2% for 6, 10 and 18 MV beams. No deviation was observed for the Co-60 beam. As the field size increased to 24x24 cm2, the deviation became significant for both films: ∼7.5% for Co-60, ∼5% for 6 MV and 10 MV, and ∼6% for 18 MV. During the verification of IMRT plans, EDR2 film showed a better agreement with the calculated dose distributions than the XV2 film