Dose distribution of a 125 keV mean energy microplanar x-ray beam for basic studies on microbeam radiotherapy

A multislit collimator was designed and fabricated for basic studies on microbeam radiation therapy (MRT) with an x-ray energy of about 100 keV. It consists of 30 slits that are 25 mu m high, 30 mm wide, and 5 mm thick in the beam direction. The slits were made of 25 mu m-thick polyimide sheets that were separated by 175 mu m-thick tungsten sheets. The authors measured the dose distribution of a single microbeam with a mean energy of 125 keV by a scanning slit method using a phosphor coupled to a charge coupled device camera and found that the ratios of the dose at the center of a microbeam to that at midpositions to adjacent slits were 1050 and 760 for each side of the microbeam. This dose distribution was well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation code PHITS. (C) 2008 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.