Effects of main components of clinical linac on X-ray energy spectra

Background: It is well known that the main components of clinical linac such as the primary collimator, flattening filter and secondary collimator affect the X-ray energy spectra. How does it appear is the foundation of dose calculation, and it is helpful for building up a beam model. Purpose: This paper aims to make a detailed study on the effects of these main components on the X-ray energy spectra of a clinical linac beam. Methods: Monte Carlo program EGSnrc/BEAMnrc is employed to build up the beam model of Varian 600C linac, as well as the other three different beam models: without primary collimator, without flattening filter, without secondary collimator at the same time. After respective simulations, we use Beamdp program to analyze the phase space files, so as to obtain energy spectra for different models. Results: Flattening filter has heavy influence on X-ray beam's energy spectra, the mean energy increases by 48.9% compared with its absence. But the primary collimator and secondary collimator have little influence on energy spectra, the change of mean energy is within 1% compared their absence. In the center field size of 10 cm × 10 cm, flattening filter could let the energy fluence decrease by 52.4%, but the distribution becomes more flat and the unflatness changes from 15.09% to 1.82%; primary collimator could increase energy fluence by 1.58%; but secondary collimator could decrease the energy fluence by 2.00%. Conclusion: Flattening filter has mainly influence on the energy spectra of X-ray beam, it could let the mean energy increase and the energy fluence distribution become more flat; the scatter of primary collimator for X-ray beam must be taken into account whilst the scatter of secondary collimator for X-ray beam can be neglected. The results are meaningful to build a X-ray beam model for clinical linac. (authors)