Background: Accurate small radiation field dosimetry is essential in modern radiotherapy techniques such as stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT). Precise measurement of dosimetric parameters such as beam profile, percentage depth doses and output factor of these beams are complicated due to the electron disequilibrium and the steep dose gradients. In the p...

Background: Megavoltage beams used in radiotherapy are contaminated with secondary electrons. Different parts of linac head and air above patient act as a source of this contamination. This contamination can increase damage to skin and subcutaneous tissue during radiotherapy. Monte Carlo simulation is an accurate method for dose calculation in medical dosimetry and has an important role in opt...

Atomic bomb doses in Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been evaluated by many groups. In the 'Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Dosimetry Group' used in this study, radioactivities of l52Eu and 6"Co in exposed rock samples have been measured to evaluate neutron doses both in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These radioactivities were induced by neutron capture reactions. Thermoluminescence dosimetry has also been applied...

Introduction: Radiotherapy is an effective modality to treat esophageal carcinoma. Due to various inhomogenous tissues with a variety of physical and radiological properties which can cause uncertainty in accurate dose calculations in radiation therapy, accuracy of TPS is very important. The aim of this study was to quantify dose calculation accuracy of CoreplanTM TPS in an inh...

BACKGROUND Independent external audits play an important role in quality assurance programme in radiation oncology. The audit supported by the IAEA in Serbia was designed to review the whole chain of activities in 3D conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT) workflow, from patient data acquisition to treatment planning and dose delivery. The audit was based on the IAEA recommendations and focused on dosi...

Introduction: Internal radiation dosimetry is important from a radiation protection point of view and can help to optimize the radiation dose delivered to the workers, public, and patients. It has a rather simple protocol but needs a large amount of data. Therefore, it is difficult to do on a routine basis. The use of computer programs makes internal radiation dosimetry simpler...

In this study, the clinical benefit of the improved accuracy of the Acuros XB (AXB) algorithm, implemented in a commercial radiotherapy treatment planning system (TPS), Varian Eclipse, was demonstrated with beams traversing a high-Z material. This is also the first study assessing the accuracy of the AXB algorithm applying volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) technique compared to full Monte...

Radionuclide therapy requires patient-specific planning of the absorbed dose to target volumes, in most cases tumours, in order to achieve an expected biological effect, taking into account that the absorbed doses to normal organs and tissues should be kept as low as reasonably achievable. Therefore, the calculation of absorbed doses has to be as accurate as possible. The accuracy depends on th...

BACKGROUND Targeted radionuclide therapy is a rapidly growing modality. A few commercial treatment planning systems are entering the market. However, some in-house systems are currently developed for a more flexible and customized dosimetry calculation at voxel-level. For this purpose, we developed a novel software, VoxelMed, and performed a comparison with the software STRATOS. METHODS The v...

This work presents BrachyGuide, a brachytherapy-dedicated software tool for the automatic preparation of input files for Monte Carlo simulation from treatment plans exported in DICOM RT format, and results of calculations performed for its benchmarking. Three plans were prepared using two computational models, the image series of a water sphere and a multicatheter breast brachytherapy patient, ...