The dosimetry of very small electron fields can be challenging due to relative shifts in percent depth-dose curves, including the location of dmax, and lack of lateral electronic equilibrium in an ion chamber when placed in the beam. Conventionally a small parallel plate chamber or film is utilized to perform small field electron beam dosimetry. Since modern radiotherapy departments are becomin...

OBJECTIVE To summarize the research progress about the dosimetry and biological predictors of radiation-induced esophagitis. METHODS We performed a systematic literature review addressing radiation esophagitis in the treatment of lung cancer published between January 2009 and May 2015 in the PubMed full-text database index systems. RESULTS Twenty-eight eligible documents were included in th...

Radiotherapy (RT) has played important roles in cancer treatment for more than one century. The development of RT techniques allows high-dose irradiation to tumors while reducing the radiation doses delivered to surrounding normal tissues. However, RT is a complex process and involves understanding of the principles of medical physics, radiobiology, radiation safety, dosimetry, radiation treatm...

The neutron therapy facility at the Gershenson Radiation Oncology Center, Harper University Hospital in Detroit has been operational since September 1991. The d(48.5)+Be beam is produced in a gantry mounted superconducting cyclotron designed and built at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL). Measurements were performed in order to obtain the physical characteristics of the n...

The Radiological Physics Center (RPC) developed two heterogeneous anthropomorphic quality assurance phantoms for use in verifying the accuracy of radiation delivery: one for intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) to the pelvis and the other for stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) to the thorax. The purpose of this study was to describe the design and development of these two phanto...

Recent standard dosimetry protocols recommend that plane-parallel ionization chambers be used in the measurements of depth-dose distributions or the calibration of low-energy electron beams with beam quality R50 <4 g/cm2. In electron dosimetry protocols with the plane-parallel chambers, the wall correction factor, Pwall, in water is assumed to be unity and the replacement correction factor, Pre...

The therapeutic use of radioisotopes in medicine as unsealed sources has a long history dating back to the 1930s. The established and continuing objectives are to provide radiation dose to the target tissue at the desired cytotoxic level while avoiding or minimizing toxic effects. Selected radionuclide therapy protocols including 32P for polycythemia vera, 131I for Graves' disease, and 131I for...

OBJECTIVES The Phase I safety, biodistribution and internal radiation dosimetry study in adult healthy Japanese males of flutemetamol ((18)F) injection, an in vivo β-amyloid imaging agent, is reported and compared with previously obtained Caucasian data. METHODS Whole-body PET scans of 6 healthy volunteers (age 51.8-61.7 years) were acquired approximately 4 h post-injection (administered acti...

The goal of this study was to determine dominant factors affecting treatment response in pancreatic cancer photodynamic therapy (PDT), based on clinically available information in the VERTPAC-01 trial. This trial investigated the safety and efficacy of verteporfin PDT in 15 patients with locally advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma. CT scans before and after contrast enhancement from the 15 patie...

Silicon diode dosimeters have been used routinely for in-vivo dosimetry. Despite their popularity, an appropriate implementation of an in-vivo dosimetry program using diode detectors remains a challenge for clinical physicists. One common approach is to relate the diode readout to the entrance dose, that is, dose to the reference depth of maximum dose such as d(max) for the 10x10 cm(2) field. V...