Abstract
In this work, the use of gold and gold alloy plaques is proposed for the first time, to reduce the dose to healthy organs in brachytherapy with Ir-192 sources. For dose simulations in tumour and healthy tissue, the MCNPX Monte Carlo code was used. The radiation source implemented in those simulations was benchmarked with well-known TG-43 criteria of dose rate constant, air-kerma strength, radial dose function, and 2D anisotropy function. For various arrangements of iridium sources and plaques of gold and gold alloy of various thicknesses, the dose distributions in an esophagus tumour and in surrounding healthy organs were simulated. The results showed that while the dose to the tumour is not much affected by the presence of gold plaques with a thickness of 3.5 mm in an optimized 192Ir sources’ configuration, a relative reduction in average organ dose of 64%, 65%, 73%, 67%, and 35% was observed, for esophagus, thyroid, heart, stomach, and liver, respectively. Moreover, it was found that a gold plaque leads to smaller doses to healthy organs than a gold alloy plaque. It is concluded that gold plaques can be used to improve the treatment of esophageal cancer by HDR brachytherapy and to protect surrounding non-target organs.
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source center. Results shown correspond to simulations in an 80 × 80 × 80 cm3 water phantom and in a sphere of 30 cm diameter
source particle as a function of depth a) in tumour and b) in the soft tissue at the right side of the plaque (See Fig. 2-b). Error bars show the statistical uncertainties, and are smaller than the symbols for some depths
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Masoudi, S.F., Baratian, S., Asadi, S. et al. Dose reduction in HDR brachytherapy of esophageal cancer using gold and gold alloy plaques: a Monte Carlo study. Radiat Environ Biophys 60, 115–124 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00411-020-00885-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00411-020-00885-4