This study investigates the feasibility and applicability of cone beam CT for a megavoltage therapeutic LINAC. A Rando head phantom was irradiated using the 15 MV beam of a Varian 2100C LINAC at MSKCC for gantry angles from -102° to 102° with a 2° increment. The projection image for each gantry angle was obtained using a Varian Mark II EPID. Reference images without phantom were also collected ...

The desire to improve local tumour control and cure more cancer patients, coupled with advances in computer technology and linear accelerator design, has spurred the developments of three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy techniques. Optimized treatment plans, aiming to deliver high dose to the target while minimizing dose to the surrounding tissues, can be delivered with multiple fields each ...

The purpose of this study is to describe the comprehensive commissioning process and initial clinical performance of the Vero linear accelerator, a new radiotherapy device recently installed at UT Southwestern Medical Center specifically developed for delivery of image-guided stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR). The Vero system utilizes a ring gantry to integrate a beam delivery platform ...

A recent control system update for Elekta linear accelerators includes the ability to deliver volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT) with continuously variable dose rate (CVDR), rather than a number of fixed binned dose rates (BDR). The capacity to select from a larger range of dose rates allows the linac to maintain higher gantry speeds, resulting in faster, smoother deliveries. The purpose o...

PURPOSE Volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) involves the simultaneous use of dynamic multileaf collimator (DMLC) techniques and gantry arcing; appropriate quality assurance is therefore required. This article describes the development and implementation of procedures for commissioning VMAT on a commercial linear accelerator (Elekta PreciseBeam VMAT with MLCi and Beam Modulator heads). MAT...

A scanned proton beam yields dose distributions that in most cases are superior to other external radiation treatment modalities, and also to passively scattered proton beams. The present paper gives a description of the scanning system that has been developed at the The Svedberg Laboratory (TSL) in Uppsala. The solution with a small polegap of the magnets and a moveable second magnet gives a v...

We consider the beam orientation optimization (BOO) problem for total marrow irradiation (TMI) treatment planning using intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). Currently, IMRT is not widely used in TMI treatment delivery; furthermore, the effect of using non-coplanar beam orientations is not known. We propose and implement several variations of a single neighborhood search algorithm that ...

A software tool is developed, given a new treatment plan, to predict treatment delivery time for radiation therapy (RT) treatments of patients on ViewRay magnetic resonance image-guided radiation therapy (MR-IGRT) delivery system. This tool is necessary for managing patient treatment scheduling in our clinic. The predicted treatment delivery time and the assessment of plan complexities could al...