A New Method to Measure the Electron Beam Energy Spectrum

Abstract

An innovative method has been used to calculate electron beam energy spectrum using depth-dose curve. The depth-dose distributions of the electron beam with different primary energies emerging from the electron accelerator were measured in water phantom after passing through a lead scatterer plate, using a computer-controlled plane-parallel chamber dosimetry system. The obtained depth-dose curves of the electrons were considered as the primary data to calculate the electron beam energy spectrum. Considering that the empirical depth-dose curve is a combination of the single-energy electron depth-dose curves, the electron energy spectrums were calculated via mathematical methods based on the superposition principle. The depth-dose curves for single-energy electrons were also calculated using the EGS4 computer code. The results for the energies of the electron beams were found to be 8, 12, and 18MeV.

Keywords

• electron beam
• energy spectrum
• egs4
• superposition principle