Radiotherapy Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Radiotherapy, including details on cancer treatment, side effects.

3D dose reconstruction to insure correct external beam treatment of patients.

Renner WD

Math Resolutions, LLC, Columbia, MD, USA. WendelDRenner@MathResolutions.com

Radiation therapy treatments have become increasingly more complicated. There are multiple opportunities for humans, machines, software, and combinations thereof to result in a treatment error that could be of significance. Current methods for quality assurance are often abstract in nature and may have unclear underlying assumptions as to what is assumed to be working correctly, or may depend upon the diligence of persons to discover errors from a review of the treatment plan. Here, an example will be shown of a direct method to reconstruct and demonstrate the dose and the dose distribution delivered to a particular patient. By measuring the radiation fields that come out of the accelerator, and using the measurement as input to a 3-dimensional (3D) dose algorithm, the delivered patient dose is determined and presented in a manner similar to the treatment plan. The intended treatment plan dose may be directly compared. Using this feedback mechanism, there is less abstraction and dependence upon the diligence of individuals checking multiple steps in a treatment process, and assumptions can be clearly stated. With this system, the dose is determined and presented minimizing assumptions and dependence upon other systems.

Published 20 August 2007 in Med Dosim, 32(3): 157-65.
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