PURPOSE The commissioning of treatment planning systems and beam modeling requires measured input parameters. The measurement of relative output in-air, Sc is particularly difficult for small fields. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of miniphantom design and detector selection on measured Sc values for small fields and to validate the measurements against Monte Carlo s...

Aim: To evaluate the plan quality of 6MV unflattened (UFB) and flattened beam (FB) photon energy using AAA dose calculation algorithms for volumetric arc therapy. Materials and Methods: Plans were generated for bilateral carcinoma of breast and the dose prescribed was 50.4Gy in 28 fractions. Two different plans were made for each patient using 6MV FB and 6MV UFB. Dose calculations were performe...

The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of different commercial quality assurance (QA) systems for the pretreatment verification plan of stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) with volumetric arc therapy (VMAT) technique using a flattening-filter-free beam. The verification for 20 pretreatment cancer patients (seven lung, six spine, and seven prostate cancers) were tested using ...

Lead or cerrobend blocking strips are used to shape electron treatment fields when an appropriate custom insert is not available. For the Varian 2100C accelerator, the structural supports of the electron applicators impede the free placement of these field-shaping strips on the open custom insert frame while placement at the top of the applicator is unimpeded. We have investigated the dosimetri...

The potential of the PRESAGE™/Optical-CT system as a comprehensive 3D dosimetry tool has been demonstrated. The current study focused on detailed characterization of robustness (intra-dosimeter uniformity and temporal stability) and reproducibility (inter-dosimeter reproducibility) of PRESAGE™ inserts compatible with the RPC H&N phantom. In addition, the accuracy and precision of PRESAGE dose m...

A new electron monitor unit (MU) calculator program called "eMUc" was developed to provide a convenient electron MU calculation platform for the physics and radiotherapy staff in electron radiotherapy. The program was written using the Microsoft Visual Basic.net framework and has a user-friendly front-end window with the following features: (1) Apart from using the well-known polynomial curvefi...

The lateral buildup ratio (LBR) used to estimate the depth dose distribution of electron beams for an irregular cutout field was obtained for a 4-MeV energy beam from a Varian 21 EX linear accelerator. The depth-dose curves for a group of circular cutout fields starting from a 2-cm diameter were measured. Electron diodes were used in a large water tank to measure the LBR values for 6, 9, 12, an...

We have recently commissioned a temporary radiation therapy facility that is novel in two aspects: it was constructed using modular components, and the LINAC was installed in one of the modular sections before it was lifted into position. Additional steel and granular fill was added to the modular sections on-site during construction. The building will be disassembled and removed when no longer...