Measurement of output factors for small photon beams

A variety of detectors and procedures for the measurement of small field output factors are discussed in the current literature. Different detectors with or without corrections are recommended. Correction factors are often derived by Monte Carlo methods, where the bias due to approximations in the model is difficult to judge. Over that, results appear to be contradictory in some cases. In this work, output factors were measured for field sizes from 4 mm up to 180 mm side length with different detectors. A simple linear correction for the energy response of solid state detectors is proposed. This led to identical values down to 8 mm field size, as long as the size of the detector is small against the field size. The correction was of the order of a few percent. For a shielded silicon diode it was well below 1%. A physically meaningful function is proposed in order to calculate output factors for arbitrary field sizes with high accuracy. (c) 2007 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.