Determination of effective electron source size using multislit and pinhole cameras)

Two independent methods have been utilized for determination of effective source sizes for 6, 12, and 20 MeV electron beams generated by a Varian 2100C linear accelerator. First, a multislit camera has been constructed using parallel aluminum plates and plastic strip spacers, similar to the beam-spot camera for the photon source imaging. Second, pinhole imaging was performed using a lead plate with a small hole on the central axis of the beam. The plate thickness and the hole diameter varied with electron energy. The cameras were positioned directly at the opening of the movable photon collimator. The size of the source distribution from each camera was characterized by its full width at half-maximum (FWHM) value. The measured values of EWHM are different for each camera because of their different imaging principles. For the multislit camera, the measured FWHM values were (6.3+/-0.4) cm for the 6 MeV beam, (3.6+/-0.4) cm for 12 MeV, and (2.7+/-0.4) cm for 20 MeV. For the pinhole camera the measured values of FWHM were (7.9+/-0.6) cm for 6 MeV, (4.5+/-0.4) cm for 12 MeV, and (3.0+/-0.4) cm for the 20 MeV beam. Additionally, the effective source position was derived from output measurements at different values of the SSD, which were fitted to the inverse square law. (C) 2000 American Association of Physicists in Medicine. [S0094-2405(00)00710-0].