Monte Carlo-based QA for IMRT of head and neck cancers

WE-E-BRB-09: A GPU-Based Monte Carlo QA Tool for IMRT and VMAT.

PURPOSE To develop a GPU-based Monte Carlo (MC) 3D dosimetry quality assurance (QA) tool employing patient geometry and actual delivery information. METHODS First, we generate fluence maps at all beam angles from the initial treatment plan. A GPU-based MC dose engine, gDPM, is employed for the secondary dose calculation (SDC) on patient CT. This SDC is used to verify the TPS plan dose (PD) ac...

Ultrasonographic changes of submandibular glands in irradiated patients for head and neck cancers

Background: Salivary glands (SGs) are usually irradiated during radiotherapy for head and neck cancers, which may lead to radiation-induced changes. These changes could be evaluated safely by ultrasonography; however, there have been few studies in this regard. Thus, we aimed to investigate the changes in post-radiotherapy submandibular glands using ultrasonography in patients undergoing head-n...

Optimization strategies for pulsed low‐dose‐rate IMRT of recurrent lung and head and neck cancers

Pulsed low-dose-rate radiotherapy (PLDR) has been proven to be a valid method of reirradiation. Previous studies of recurrent cancer radiotherapy were mainly based on conventional 3D CRT and VMAT delivery techniques. There are difficulties in IMRT planning using existing commercial treatment planning systems (TPS) to meet the PLDR protocol. This work focuses on PLDR using ten-field IMRT and a c...

Head and neck cancers.

The importance of accurate linear accelerator head modelling for IMRT Monte Carlo calculations.

Two Monte Carlo dose engines for radiotherapy treatment planning, namely a beta release of Peregrine and MCDE (Monte Carlo dose engine), were compared with Helax-TMS (collapsed cone superposition convolution) for a head and neck patient for the Elekta SLi plus linear accelerator. Deviations between the beta release of Peregrine and MCDE up to 10% were obtained in the dose volume histogram of th...