BACKGROUND Megavoltage beams used in radiotherapy are contaminated with secondary electrons. Different parts of linac head and air above patient act as a source of this contamination. This contamination can increase damage to skin and subcutaneous tissue during radiotherapy. Monte Carlo simulation is an accurate method for dose calculation in medical dosimetry and has an important role in optim...

Out-of-field doses from radiotherapy can cause harmful side effects or eventually lead to secondary cancers. Scattered doses outside the applicator field, neutron source strength values, and neutron dose equivalents have not been broadly investigated for high-energy electron beams. To better understand the extent of these exposures, we measured out-of-field dose characteristics of electron appl...

  Introduction: Several studies have discussed to the electron contamination caused by the air column between the head of linac and patient for photon beams. Since it is not possible to measure the electron contamination with practical dosimetry, the Monte Carlo technique is an appropriate and accurate choice to calculate particle flounce in radiation therapy. The purpose of t...

Background: The electron contamination may reduce or even diminish the skin sparing property of the megavoltage beam. The detailed characteristics of contaminant electrons are presented for different field sizes and cases. Materials and Methods: The Monte Carlo code, MCNPX, has been used to simulate 18 MV photon beam from a Varian Linac-2300 accelerator. All dose measurements were car...

Monte Carlo studies have recently renewed interest in the use of the effect of strong transverse and longitudinal magnetic fields to manipulate the dose characteristics of clinical photon and electron beams. A 3.5 T superconducting solenoidal magnet was used to evaluate the effect of a longitudinal field on both photon and electron beams. This note describes the apparatus and demonstrates some ...

background: accurate small radiation field dosimetry is essential in modern radiotherapy techniques such as stereotactic radiosurgery (srs) and intensity modulated radiotherapy (imrt). precise measurement of dosimetric parameters such as beam profile, percentage depth doses and output factor of these beams are complicated due to the electron disequilibrium and the steep dose gradients. in the p...

Background: The lack of lateral electronic disequilibrium (LED) becomes a main problem in small field. This factor affects the dose in target volume cannot predict correctly. In addition, utilization of high-energy linear accelerator (10 MV) can emit some unwanted particles (electron contamination). Therefore, the aim of this study was to characterize head linear accelerator (linac) Varian Clin...

background: one of the main problems of dedicated iort accelerators is to determine dosimetric characteristics of the electron beams. monte carlo simulation of iort accelerator head and produced beam will be useful to improve the accuracy of beam dosimetry. materials and methods: liac accelerator head was modeled using the beamnrcmonte carlo simulation system. phase-space files were generated a...

background: during radiotherapy treatment, critical organs are shielded using lead and cerrobend blocks. the objective of this study is to compare the effects of lead and cerrobend shielding blocks on incident photon beam. methods: collimator scatter factors were measured for open square fields (3 x 3 cm to 40 x 40 cm) defined by collimator jaws and for fields blocked down to smaller asymmetric...

Background: Accurate small radiation field dosimetry is essential in modern radiotherapy techniques such as stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT). Precise measurement of dosimetric parameters such as beam profile, percentage depth doses and output factor of these beams are complicated due to the electron disequilibrium and the steep dose gradients. In the p...