Developing a mobile application for usual calculations of radiotherapy physics

Introduction: Successful radiotherapy requires the precise application of a radiation dose to cancerous tissue, which can be achieved by the design of proper treatment methods by radiotherapy physicists. Tasks performed by radiotherapy physicists include verifying the accuracy of dose calculations, correct treatment planning and the proper functioning of accelerators. They are also responsible for controlling the radiation dose applied to tumors and sensitive organs. Because more than half of cancer patients need radiotherapy, the related calculations are very important in the estimation of the tumor dose. Owing to the increased use of computers and simulation software in medical science, as well as trends indicating its continued growth. This study aims to develop a new smart-phone application to perform common radiotherapy-related calculations.    Materials and Methods: The proposed application was developed using several resources including radiotherapy physics reference books based on the Android operating system in Java. The items that were applied in this application for the calculation process include: superficial dosimetry, cobalt dosimetry (water phantom), cobalt dosimetry (in air), timer error, time dose fractionation (TDF), superficial cone, superficial collimator, equivalent square, Linac dose, tissue phantom ratio 20-10, motorized wedge, field gap, biologically effective dose (BED), absolute linac dosimetry, Mayneord F factor. The last eight items mentioned above are available in separate categories within the application. Each category has the following headings: “Item”, “Help”, “Related citations”, and the “Last review” of the application developer in the latest version of the cited source. Explanations and details of all mentioned formulas and calculations are available in the cited sources. The results can be saved after completing the process of calculating the factor of the item. Results: All programming and computational errors were resolved using Android Studio software. It was observed that this application can perform mathematical computations without errors to several decimal places. The application runs on all smart-phones with android version 4 and up. So far, the application has been investigated and approved manually by the radiotherapy physicist and application developer programmer, according to the latest sources of oncology and radiotherapy physics listed in the Materials and Methods. Conclusion: Given that there are no existing mobile applications in this field, the proposed application may be useful in facilitating and accelerating radiotherapy related calculations.