Experimental study of a single-pixel prototype anti-scatter detector for megavoltage x-ray imaging

Scattered x rays are detrimental to the image quality of x-ray transmission radiography. Anti-scatter grids have been used in diagnostic x-ray imaging to improve the image quality but are not practical to use for megavoltage (MV) x-ray imaging in radiotherapy since a MV grid would be very bulky, heavy, and costly. An inherent anti-scatter detector based on Čerenkov radiation was introduced recently for MV x-ray imaging. The purpose of this work is to investigate experimentally the anti-scatter property of a single pixel prototype detector. The scatter to primary ratio (SPR) has been measured using a linear accelerator with a 6 MV x-ray beam. It has been found that the SPR for the prototype detector is 30-60% less than that of an ionization chamber, depending on the imaging geometry. This indicates the prototype detector is less sensitive to scattered radiation.