Abstract
Objective
The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) on surface doses for brain, abdomen and pelvis deep located tumors treated with 6 MV photon and to evaluate the skin dose calculation accuracy of the XIO 4.04 treatment planning system.
Methods
More investigations for the influences of IMRT on skin doses would increase its applications for many treatment sites. Measuring skin doses in real treatment situations would reduce the uncertainty of skin dose prediction. In this work a pediatric human phantom was covered by a layer of 1 mm bolus at three treatment sites and thermoluminescent dosimeter (TLD) chips were inserted into the bolus at each treatment site before CT scan. Two different treatment plans [three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy (3DCRT) and IMRT] for each treatment sites were performed on XIO 4.04 treatment planning system using superposition algorism.
Results
The results showed that the surface doses for 3DCRT were higher than the surface doses in IMRT by 1.6%, 2.5% and 3.2% for brain, abdomen and pelvis sites respectively. There was good agreement between measured and calculated surface doses, where the calculated surface dose was 15.5% for brain tumor calculated with 3DCRT whereas the measured surface dose was 12.1%. For abdomen site the calculated surface dose for IMRT treatment plan was 16.5% whereas the measured surface dose was 12.6%.
Conclusion
The skin dose in IMRT for deep seated tumors is lower than that in 3DCRT which is another advantage for the IMRT. The TLD readings showed that the difference between the calculated and measured point dose is negligible. The superposition calculation algorism of the XIO 4.04 treatment planning system modeled the superficial dose well.
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Abou-Elenein, H.S., Attalla, E.M., Ammar, H. et al. The impact of intensity modulated radiotherapy on the skin dose for deep seated tumors. Chin. -Ger. J. Clin. Oncol. 12, 194–198 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10330-012-1127-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10330-012-1127-1