Evaluation of the magnitude of EBT Gafchromic film polarization effects

Gafchromic EBT film, has become a main dosimetric tools for quantitative evaluation of radiation doses in radiation therapy application. One aspect of variability using EBT Gafchromic film is the magnitude of the orientation effect when analysing the film in landscape or portrait mode. This work has utilized a >99% plane polarized light source and a non-polarized diffuse light source to investigate the absolute magnitude of EBT Gafchromic films polarization or orientation effects. Results have shown that using a non-polarized light source produces a negligible orientation effect for EBT Gafchromic film and thus the angle of orientation is not important. However, the film exhibits a significant variation in transmitted optical density with angle of orientation to polarized light producing more than 100% increase, or over a doubling of measured OD for films irradiated with x-rays up to dose levels of 5 Gy. The maximum optical density was found to be in a plane at an angle of 14 degrees +/- 7 degrees (2SD) when the polarizing sheet is turned clockwise with respect to the film. As the magnitude of the orientation effect follows a sinusoidal shape it becomes more critical for alignment accuracy of the film with respect to the polarizing direction in the anticlockwise direction as this will place the alignment of the polarizing axes on the steeper gradient section of the sinusoidal pattern. An average change of 4.5% per 5 degrees is seen for an anticlockwise polarizer rotation where as the effect is 1.2% per 5 degrees for an clockwise polarizer rotation. This may have consequences to the positional accuracy of placement of the EBT Gafchromic film on a scanner as even a 1 degrees alignment error can cause an approximate 1% error in analysis. The magnitude of the orientation effect is therefore dependant on the degree of polarization of the scanning light source and can range from negligible (diffuse LED light source) through to more than 100% or doubling of OD variation with a fully linear polarized light source.