Introduction: Inclusion of inhomogeneities such as air-filled cavities in the head and neck treatment fields may result in potential dosimetric disagreement which was caused by electronic disequilibrium. Most of treatments planning systems (TPS) are not able to predict dose distribution of inhomogeneous regions accurately. EBT2 films are used frequently in radiotherapy quality ass...

The aims of this study are to design, construct and evaluate the applicability of a head and neck Perspex phantom for dosimetric verification of intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). Thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs) was used in this study. Consistency of the fabricated phantom readings was checked by multiple IMRT irradiations. The inter-fraction standard deviation among all TLDs’ me...

Patient-specific quality assurance for intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) dose verification is essential. The aim of this study is to provide a new method based on the relative error distribution by comparing the fluence map from the treatment planning system (TPS) and the incident fluence deconvolved from the electronic portal imaging device (EPID) images. This method is validated fo...

Noncoplanar fields are normally used to improve the dose conformity of the target while sparing organs at risk. One of the methods to verify the dose distribution from the noncoplanar fields is by comparing their planar dose distributions from the treatment planning system (TPS) and the measured ones; for example, using film or electronic portal imaging devices (EPID). The planar dose distribut...

To be successful in the future a global marketer must develop an excellent quality management system that can impress consumers and continuously provide excellent quality products in a timely manner through corporate management for manufacturing in the 21st century. The author proposes a Global Quality Management System for transforming technology called “New JIT, new management technology prin...

The use of image-based 3D treatment planning has significantly increased the complexity of commercially available treatment-planning systems (TPSs). Medical physicists have traditionally focused their efforts on understanding the calculation algorithm; this is no longer possible. A quality assurance (QA) program for our 3D treatment-planning system (ADAC Pinnacle3) is presented. The program is ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE One of the newer audit modalities operated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) involves audits of treatment planning systems (TPS) in radiotherapy. The main focus of the audit is the dosimetry verification of the delivery of a radiation treatment plan for three-dimensional (3D) conformal radiotherapy using high energy photon beams. The audit has been carried ...

MIM Symphony is a recently introduced low-dose-rate prostate brachytherapy treatment planning system (TPS). We evaluated the dosimetric and planning accuracy of this new TPS compared to the universally used VariSeed TPS. For dosimetric evaluation of the MIM Symphony version 5.4 TPS, we compared dose calculations from the MIM Symphony TPS with the formalism recommended by the American Associatio...

Monte Carlo (MC) methods are increasingly being utilized to support several aspects of commissioning and clinical operation of ion beam therapy facilities. In this contribution two emerging areas of MC applications are outlined. The value of MC modeling to promote accurate treatment planning is addressed via examples of application of the FLUKA code to proton and carbon ion therapy at the Heide...

Intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) are state-of-the-art irradiation techniques for the delivery of highly conformal radiation fields to the target volume. These techniques require complex treatment planning system (TPS) algorithms as well as sophisticated irradiation methods. As a result, the use of quality assurance tools for the verificati...