Refinement of the dual ionisation chamber dosimetry carried out at the accelerator-based epithermal neutron beam facility of the University of Birmingham

The paper presents the refined dual ionisation chamber technique used for in-air and in-phantom measurements in the Birmingham epithermal neutron beam. The study includes the derivation of the spectrum-dependent relative neutron sensitivity of the tissue-equivalent ionisation chamber. The average values over shallow depths for the kt parameter in A150 is 0.85 +/- 0.04, corresponding to an average value of 0.80 for water. For photon dosimetry in mixed fields, the formalism initially proposed by Munck af Rosenschold et al has been applied at a specific depth of 3 cm using MCNP4C as the radiation transport tool in the mixed beam and the reference calibration beam to generate electron fluence profiles in the detector gas cavities. The BEAMnrc code was used to generate the starting photon spectrum for the 8MV photon beam. The effect of the chosen energy-indexing algorithm on the in-cavity electron dose using the MNCP4C *F8 tally was also investigated. (author)