Current clinical experience in radiation therapy is based upon dose computations that report the absorbed dose to water, even though the patient is not made of water but of many different types of tissue. While Monte Carlo dose calculation algorithms have the potential for higher dose accuracy, they usually transport particles in and compute the absorbed dose to the patient media such as soft t...

The preceding DIN 6800-2 (1997) protocol has been revised by a German task group and its latest version was published in March 2008 as the national standard dosimetry protocol DIN 6800-2 (2008 March). Since then, in Germany the determination of absorbed dose to water for high-energy photon and electron beams has to be performed according to this new German dosimetry protocol. The IAEA Code of P...

Introduction: Radiation therapy following breast conserving surgery is one of the most common procedures performed in any radiation oncology department. A tangential parallel-opposed pair is almost always the technique of choice for this purpose. This technique is often performed based on 3D treatment planning. The aim of this study was to compare 3D treatment planning for two different energie...

Introduction: MRI-only treatment planning (TP) can be advantageous in paediatric radiotherapy. However, electron density extraction is necessary for dose calculation. Normally, after bone segmentation, a bulk density is assigned. However, the variation of bone bulk density in patients makes the creation of pseudo CTs challenging. This study aims to assess the effects of bone den...

Background: The dosimetric performance of Eclipse 6.5 three dimensional treatment planning system (3DTPS) is evaluated by comparing the calculated and measured dose in two dimensions following the guide lines of American Association for Physicists in Medicine Task Group 53. Materials and Methods: The calculations were performed by the 3DTPS for symmetric as well as asymmetric fields for standar...

Introduction: Esophageal cancer is one of the most frequently occurring cancers in Iran and having a  high  incidence  rate  among  other  countries.  Radiotherapy  is  one  of  the  three  methods  (surgery,  radiotherapy and chemotherapy) for radical or palliative treatment of esophageal cancer. In this method  of treatment, the organs such as heart and spinal cord are regarded as organs at r...

A radiotheraphy skin dose profile can be obtained with radiochromic film. The central axis skin dose relative to Dmax for a 10 x 10 cm2 field size was found to be 22%, 17% and 15.5% for 6 MV, 10 MV and 18 MV photon beams. Peripheral dose increased with increasing field size. At 10 MV the skin dose 2 cm outside the geometric field edge was measured as 6%, 10% and 17% for 10 x 10 cm2, 20 x 20 cm2...

Understanding head scatter characteristics of photon beams is vital to properly commission treatment planning (TP) algorithms. Simultaneously, having definitive surface and buildup region dosimetry is important to optimize bolus. The Elekta Precise linacs have unique beam flattening filter configurations for each photon beam (6, 10, and 18 MV) in terms of material and location. We performed a c...

One of the applications of gold nanoparticles (GNPs) in medicine is radiation dose-enhancing effect. Although there are many simulations, in vitro and in vivo evidence that GNPs can enhance significantly the radiation dose effect of orthovoltage beams. These beams compared with megavoltage (MV) beams, have limited applications in radiotherapy. In order to evaluate GNPs radiosensitization perfor...

Vascular access ports are used widely in the administering of drugs for radiation oncology patients. Their dosimetric effect on radiation therapy delivery in photon beams has not been rigorously established. In this work the effects on external beam fields when any of a variety of vascular access ports is included in the path of a high energy beam are studied. This medical physics study specifi...