BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to assess plan quality and treatment time achievable with the new VMAT optimization tool implemented in the treatment planning system Oncentra MasterPlan® as compared to IMRT for Elekta SynergyS® linear accelerators. MATERIALS AND METHODS VMAT was implemented on a SynergyS® linear accelerator (Elekta Ltd., Crawley, UK) with Mosaiq® record a...

PURPOSE We aim to evaluate the effects of multileaf collimator (MLC) leaf width (5 mm vs. 2.5 mm) on the radiosurgery planning for the treatment of spine lesions according to the modulated techniques (intensity-modulated radiotherapy [IMRT] vs. volumetric-modulated arc therapy [VMAT]) and the complexity of the target shape. METHODS For this study, artificial spinal lesions were contoured and ...

BACKGROUND To compare volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) with conventional step and shoot intensity modulated radiation therapy (s-IMRT) in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients, and identify which T category patient gains the maximum benefit from VMAT. METHODS Fifty-two patients that randomly selected from 205 patients received VMAT at a single center were retrospectively replanned wi...

Multileaf collimators (MLCs) need to be characterized accurately in treatment planning systems to facilitate accurate intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT). The aim of this study was to examine the use of MapCHECK 2 and ArcCHECK diode arrays for optimizing MLC parameters in Monaco X-ray voxel Monte Carlo (XVMC) dose calculation algorithm. A ser...

The aim of this work was to investigate correlations between 2D and quasi-3D gamma passing rates. A total of 20 patients (10 prostate cases and 10 head and neck cases, H&N) were retrospectively selected. For each patient, both intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) plans were generated. For each plan, 2D gamma evaluation with radiochromic films ...

PURPOSE Magnetic resonance imaging-guided radiation therapy has entered clinical practice at several major treatment centers. Treatment of early-stage non-small cell lung cancer with stereotactic body radiation therapy is one potential application of this modality, as some form of respiratory motion management is important to address. We hypothesize that magnetic resonance imaging-guided tri-co...

In this study, we evaluated the performance of an Elekta linac in the delivery of gated radiotherapy. Delivery accuracy was examined with an emphasis on the impact of using short gating windows (low monitor unit beam-on segments) or long beam hold times. The performance was assessed using a 20cm by 20cm open field with the radiation delivered using a range of beam-on and beam-off time periods. ...

Cancer of the brain and central nervous system (CNS) is the second most common of all pediatric cancers. Treatment of many of these cancers includes radiation therapy of which radiation induced cerebral necrosis (RICN) can be a severe and potentially devastating side effect. Risk factors for RICN include brain volume irradiated, the dose given per fraction and total dose. Thirteen pediatric pat...