A technique for scatter dose calculation.

Abstract

The intent of this article is twofold: to gain a basic understanding of radiotherapy dosimetric techniques that separate primary radiation dose from tissue scatter dose, and to introduce the use of a polar grid to simplify manual calculation of scatter dose in irregularly blocked fields. This technique requires the introduction of a new term, 'scatter-pixel,' which is defined in terms of more familiar expressions. Finally, the polar grid technique is evaluated against measured data for various cases of blocking and contour fall-off.