(a) Monte Carlo simulations of the input ESF (ideally a step function) produced by
irradiating a 0.5 mm Ta edge phantom with a 6 MV beam. Results are shown as a
function of EID (0, 5, 10 cm). For an EID = 0 cm (i.e., edge resting on the front
cover of a Varian AS1000), the input ESF has slightly sloping tails that can
negatively bias the LSF baseline after differentiation (LSFs not shown). (b) and (c)
The corresponding MTFs. The ideal MTF response of the simulation (ideal detector
pixel pitch = 0.392 mm) is given by the formula, sinc (0.392 f),
where f is the spatial frequency in units of mm−1. If the
LSF is not baseline corrected (b), the results suggest that the EID should be larger
than 5 cm. As shown in (c), baseline correction of the LSF may remove any
restrictions on the EID. For each geant4 simulation (penelope
Physics), 2 × 1011 gamma photons were launched using a parallel source
representing an infinite SID so that source blurring did not affect the result. The
irradiated area was 78.4 × 78.4 mm2, the edge phantom area was 78.4 ×
39.2 mm2, and edge angle was 2.5°.