Properties of Water Substitute Solid Phantoms for Electron Dosimetry

To reduce the uncertainty in the calibration of radiation beams, absorbed dose to water for high energy electrons is recommended as the standards and reference absorbed dose by AAPM Report no.51 and IAEA Technical Reports no.398. In these recommendations, water is, defined as the reference medium, however, the water substitute solid phantoms are discouraged. Nevertheless, when accurate chamber positioning in water is not possible, or when no waterproof chamber is available, their use is permitted at beam qualities R$\_$50/ < 4 g/cm$^2$ (E$\_$0/ < 10 MeV). For the electron dosimetry using solid phantom, a depth-scaling factor is used for the conversion of depth in solid phantoms to depth in water, and a fluence-scaling factor is used for the conversion of ionization chamber reading in plastic phantom to reading in water. In this work, the properties, especially depth-scaling factors c$\_$p1/ and fluence-scaling factors h$\_$pl/ of several commercially available water substitute solid phantoms were determined, and the electron dosimetry using these scaling method was evaluated. As a result, it is obviously that dose-distribution in solid phantom can be converted to appropriate dose-distribution in water by means of IAEA depth-scaling.