Radiochromic film has become an important tool to verify dose distributions in highly conformal radiation therapy such as IMRT. Recently, a new generation of these films, EBT3, has become available. EBT3 has the same composition and thickness of the sensitive layer of the previous EBT2 films, but its symmetric layer configuration allows the user to eliminate side orientation dependence, which i...

The advanced developments in external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) over the past few decades have improved dose conformity to the target while minimizing dose to the surrounding organs at risk (OAR). Intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) are two commonly used EBRT techniques to treat cancer. In sliding window (SW) or dynamic IMRT, each radiati...

The purpose was to evaluate the effect of dose rate on discrepancies between expected and delivered dose caused by the interplay effect. Fifteen separate dynamic IMRT plans and five hybrid IMRT plans were created for five patients (three IMRT plans and one hybrid IMRT plan per patient). The impact of motion on the delivered dose was evaluated experimentally for each treatment field for differen...

In radiotherapy practice, one often needs to compare two dose distributions. Especially with the wide clinical implementation of intensity-modulated radiation therapy, software tools for quantitative dose (or fluence) distribution comparison are required for patient-specific quality assurance. Dose distribution comparison is not a trivial task since it has to be performed in both dose and spati...

Background: Radiation Pneumonia (RP) is one of the most extensive side effects in Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT) of lung cancer. SBRT are performed by means of Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT), Intensity Modulated Arc Therapy (IMAT), CyberKnife (CK) or Helical Tomotherapy (HT) treatment methods. In this study, we performed a plan study to determine the plan parameter such as the M...

In this study a novel, user-independent automated planning technique was developed to objectively compare volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) and intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) for nasopharyngeal carcinoma planning, and to determine which technique offers a greater benefit for parotid-sparing and dose escalation strategies. Ten patients were investigated, with a standard prescripti...

We study the treatment plan optimization problem for volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT). We propose a new column-generation-based algorithm that takes into account bounds on the gantry speed and dose rate, as well as an upper bound on the rate of change of the gantry speed, in addition to MLC constraints. The algorithm iteratively adds one aperture at each control point along the treatment...

Intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) is one of the most important recent developments in oncology. It enables precise conformation of the radiation dose to the target volume. It has the potential to significantly reduce long-term morbidity and improve local control. This article explains the basic principles of IMRT in comparison to other planning techniques. The current clinical data are pr...

The AAPM Professional Liability Insurance program provides a unique ability for medical physicists to obtain liability coverage for risks arising from the practice of medical physics. In the near future, the program is expected to introduce a new occurrence-form coverage option which has important implications and differences from the existing claims-made coverage. Since both forms will be offe...