ON THE FIELD-SIZE DEPENDENCE OF RELATIVE OUTPUT FROM A LINEAR-ACCELERATOR

The radiation output in air on the central axis of a linac photon beam has been modeled as the sum of two components. These are a point source representing radiation direct from the target and a distributed source representing scatter in the flattening filter and primary collimator. By fitting only two parameters, the ratio of the two components for a 20 X 20 field and a width parameter for the distributed source this semi-empirical model describes the relative outputs of square, symmetric rectangular, and asymmetric rectangular fields with an average error of 0.25% for the field sizes studied.