Water equivalence of some plastic-water phantom materials for clinical proton beam dosimetry

Plastic-water phantom materials are not exactly water equivalent since they have a different elemental composition and different interaction cross sections for protons than water. Several studies of the water equivalence of plastic-water phantom materials have been reported for photon and electron beams, but none for clinical proton beams. In proton beams, the difference between non-elastic nuclear interactions in plastic-water phantom materials compared to those in water should be considered. In this work, the water equivalence of Plastic Water® (PW)1, Plastic Water® Diagnostic Therapy (PWDT)1 and solid water (WT1)2 phantoms was studied for clinical proton energies of 60 MeV and 200 MeV. This was done by evaluating the fluence correction factor at equivalent depths; first with respect to water and then with respect to graphite by experiment and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations using FLUKA. MC simulations showed that the fluence correction with respect to water was less than 0.5% up to the entire penetration depth of the protons at 60 MeV and less than 1% at 200 MeV up to 20 cm depth for PWDT, PW and WT1. With respect to graphite the fluence correction was about 0.5% for 60 MeV and about 4% for 200 MeV. The experimental results for modulated and un-modulated 60 MeV proton beams showed good agreement with the MC simulated fluence correction factors with respect to graphite deviating less than 1% from unity for the three plastic-water phantoms.

► We study plastic-water in clinical proton beams by experiment and Monte Carlo.
► We obtain fluence correction factors for water and graphite.
► The correction factor for water was close to 1 at 60 MeV and <0.990 at 200 MeV.
► The correction factor for graphite was ∼0.5% at 60 MeV and up to 4% at 200 MeV.