The use of conformity indices to optimize Gamma Knife planning is common, but does not address important tradeoffs between dose to tumor and normal tissue. Pareto analysis has been used for this purpose in other applications, but not for Gamma Knife (GK) planning. The goal of this work is to use computer models to show that Pareto analysis may be feasible for GK planning to identify dosimetric ...

Patients who suffer from tremors are initially treated with pharmecuticals. Although medication has proven to be effective in achieving tremor control for some patients, there is still a fraction of patients who seek neurosurgical alternatives due to unacceptable tremor relief or side-effects from the prescribed drugs. Invasive neurosurgical procedures include radiofrequency thalamotomy and in ...

Monte Carlo simulation with PENELOPE (v. 2003) is applied to calculate Leksell Gamma Knifer dose distributions for heterogeneous phantoms. The usual spherical water phantom is modified with a spherical bone shell simulating the skull and an air-filled cube simulating the frontal or maxillary sinuses. Different simulations of the 201 source configuration of the Gamma Knife have been carried out ...

Stereotactic Gamma Knife radiosurgery has been widely used for treating trigeminal neuralgia (TN). A single large fractional dose of 7000 to 9000 cGy is commonly prescribed as the maximum dose for these treatments. For this reason, if a small percentage of the prescribed dose such as 2-3% scattered to the eye, it could reach or even exceed the tolerance dose of the lens. For several TN cases, w...