Although treatment planning systems are generally thought to have poor accuracy for out-of-field dose calculations, little work has been done to quantify this dose calculation inaccuracy for modern treatment techniques, such as intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), or to understand the sources of this inaccuracy. The aim of this work is to evaluate the accuracy of out-of-field dose calc...

background: the heterogeneous composition of the human body presents numerous tissue types and cavities with widely differing radiologic properties. the aim of the present work was to develop a low cost homogeneous and heterogeneous phantom and the absorbed dose were measured by ionization chamber for different radiotherapy treatment techniques and compared with treatment planning system absorb...

The purpose of this study was to assess the accuracy and efficacy of an automated treatment plan verification, or "secondary check", tool (Mobius3D), which uses a reference dataset to perform an independent three-dimensional dose verification of the treatment planning system (TPS) dose calculation and assesses plan quality by comparing dose-volume histograms to reference benchmarks. The accurac...

Bone, air passages, cavities, and lung are elements present in patients, but challenging to properly correct for in treatment planning dose calculations. Plastic scintillator detectors (PSDs) have proven to be well suited for dosimetry in non-reference conditions such as small fields. The objective of this study was to investigate the performance of a commercial treatment planning system (TPS) ...

The impact of the treatment couch on a radiotherapy plan is rarely fully assessed during the treatment planning process. Incorporating a couch model into the treatment planning system (TPS) enables the planner to avoid or dosimetrically evaluate beam-couch intersections. In this work, we demonstrate how existing TPS tools can be used to establish this capability and assess the accuracy and effe...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE One of the newer audit modalities operated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) involves audits of treatment planning systems (TPS) in radiotherapy. The main focus of the audit is the dosimetry verification of the delivery of a radiation treatment plan for three-dimensional (3D) conformal radiotherapy using high energy photon beams. The audit has been carried ...

Introduction: Breast conserving radiotherapy is one of the most common procedures performed in any radiation oncology department. A tangential parallel-opposed pair is usually used for this purpose. This technique is performed using 2D or 3D treatment planning systems. The aim of this study was to compare 2D treatment planning with 3D treatment planning in tangential irradiation in breast conse...

Background: Intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) is an advanced method for delivery of three dimensional therapies, which provides optimal dose distribution with giving multiple nonuniform fluency to the patient. The complex dose distribution of IMRT should be checked to ensure that the accurate dose is delivered. Today, film dosimetry is a powerful tool for radiotherapy treatment Quali...

BACKGROUND HDR brachytherapy is one of the commonest methods of nasopharyngeal cancer treatment. In this method, depending on how advanced one tumor is, 2 to 6 Gy dose as intracavitary brachytherapy is prescribed. Due to high dose rate and tumor location, accuracy evaluation of treatment planning system (TPS) is particularly important. Common methods used in TPS dosimetry are based on computati...

The use of image-based 3D treatment planning has significantly increased the complexity of commercially available treatment-planning systems (TPSs). Medical physicists have traditionally focused their efforts on understanding the calculation algorithm; this is no longer possible. A quality assurance (QA) program for our 3D treatment-planning system (ADAC Pinnacle3) is presented. The program is ...