Comparison of two dose-area-product ionization chambers with different conductive surface coating for over-table and under-table tube configurations.

A custom-built graphite-coated transmission ionization chamber is compared to the VacuDAP 2001 (VacuTec, Dresden, Germany), which has transparent conductive electrodes. A study was made of the dependence of response on x-ray tube potential for both types of chamber under identical conditions of exposure using over-table and under-table x-ray tubes. Since the calibration factor is the dose-area product of the radiation incident on the patient per chamber reading, it depends on the intrinsic response of the chamber as well as the effect of material in the beam between the x-ray tube and patient. Differences of about 20% were measured between the intrinsic and the over-table calibration factors and between the over-table and the under-table calibration factors for both chambers. The VacuDAP display is specifically calibrated for the over-table condition and would overstate the actual DAP in the under-table case. The intrinsic response of the graphite chamber is nearly independent of tube potential. Although the variation of response with tube potential of the graphite chamber is increased when it is used as an over-table and an under-table patient monitor, it shows less overall variation of response than the VacuDAP. The average deviation of each calibration factor from the mean is less than 5% over the range of 40 to 140 kVp for both chambers.