Characterization of noise and digitizer response variability in radiochromic film dosimetry. Impact on treatment verification

Abstract

Purpose: To study how noise and scanner response variability affect radiochromic film dosimetry.

Methods: Five treatment plans were analyzed in this work with two different multichannel protocols: the multichannel algorithm of Mayer et al. and the efficient protocol of Lewis et al.

Results and conclusion: The multichannel protocol of Mayer et al. is not able to compensate variability in scanner response, which is an important issue for radiochromic film dosimetry. The efficient protocol compensates variations of scanner response, so dose values and gamma scores become more accurate and reproducible. The compensation of digitizer scan variability of the efficient protocol, together with time averaging improve radiochromic film dosimetry. Noise is related to selected resolution in the scanner, our results show that if high resolution measurements are required, de-noising should be considered.

Keywords: Film dosimetry; Noise; Radiochromic; Scanner response.