Introduction: In radiation therapy, the accuracy of dose calculations by a treatment planning system (TPS) is important to achieve tumor control and to spare normal tissue. Treatment planning system calculations in the heterogeneous situation may present significant inaccuracies. In this study, three different dose calculation algorithms, pencil beam (PB), collapsed cone (CC), ...

Dose calculations with a collapsed cone algorithm implemented in a clinical treatment planning system have been studied. The algorithm has been evaluated in homogeneous as well as in heterogeneous media, and the results have been compared to measurements and Monte Carlo simulations. Commonly encountered clinical beam configurations as well as more complex geometries have been pursued to test th...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to compare and to validate different dose calculation algorithms for the use in radiation therapy of small lung lesions and to optimize the treatment planning using accurate dose calculation algorithms. METHODS A 9-field conformal treatment plan was generated on an inhomogeneous phantom with lung mimics and a soft tissue equivalent insert, mimicking a lung...

An increasing number of patients receiving radiation therapy have metallic implants such as hip prostheses. Therefore, beams are normally set up to avoid irradiation through the implant; however, this cannot always be accomplished. In such situations, knowledge of the accuracy of the used treatment planning system (TPS) is required. Two algorithms, the pencil beam (PB) and the collapsed cone (C...

A commercial Monte Carlo simulation package, NXEGS 1.12 (NumeriX LLC, New York, NY), was commissioned for photon-beam dose calculations. The same sets of measured data from 6-MV and 18-MV beams were used to commission NXEGS and Pinnacle 6.2b (Philips Medical Systems, Andover, MA). Accuracy and efficiency were compared against the collapsed cone convolution algorithm implemented in Pinnacle 6.2b...

PURPOSE To use a graphic processing unit (GPU) calculation engine to implement a fast 3D pre-treatment dosimetric verification procedure based on an electronic portal imaging device (EPID). METHODS The GPU algorithm includes the deconvolution and convolution method for the fluence-map calculations, the collapsed-cone convolution/superposition (CCCS) algorithm for the 3D dose calculations and ...