RapidArc™ treatment verification using polymer gel dosimetry

The aim of this study was to verify a novel volumetric arc therapy technique, RapidArc". Polymer gel dosimetry system was used to measure the advanced inhomogeneous 3D dose distribution produced using the technique RapidArc". A preclinical installation of the novel beam delivery approach was set up on a linear accelerator at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen. A prostate treatment plan was delivered to a 1.3 l nPAG gel phantom using one single arc rotation from 200 to 160 degrees, and a target dose of 3.3 Gy. Magnetic resonance imaging of the gel was carried out using the 1.5 T scanner and MATLAB was used for image processing and 3D rendering. The difference in relative absorbed dose between the treatment planning system (TPS) and gel measurement was calculated voxel by voxel within the 80% and the 95% isodose volume, respectively. Measurements agreed well with the TPS within the treated volume. Within both isodose volumes 90% of the voxels showed a deviation less or equal to 5%. This study shows that the 3D gel dosimetry system is a useful tool for dose verification of advanced treatment delivery techniques

RapidArc treatment verification in 3D using polymer gel dosimetry and Monte Carlo simulation

The aim of this study was to verify the advanced inhomogeneous dose distribution produced by a volumetric arc therapy technique (RapidArc) using 3D gel measurements and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. The TPS (treatment planning system)-calculated dose distribution was compared with gel measurements and MC simulations, thus investigating any discrepancy between the planned dose delivery and the actual delivery. Additionally, the reproducibility of the delivery was investigated using repeated gel measurements. A prostate treatment plan was delivered to a 1.3 liter nPAG gel phantom using one single arc rotation and a target dose of 3.3 Gy. Magnetic resonance imaging of the gel was carried out using a 1.5 T scanner. The MC dose distributions were calculated using the VIMC-Arc code. The relative absorbed dose differences were calculated voxel-by-voxel, within the volume enclosed by the 90% isodose surface (VOI(90)), for the TPS versus gel and TPS versus MC. The differences between the verification methods, MC versus gel, and between two repeated gel measurements were investigated in the same way. For all volume comparisons, the mean value was within 1% and the standard deviation of the differences was within 2.5% (1SD). A 3D gamma analysis between the dose matrices were carried out using gamma criteria 3%/3 mm and 5%/5 mm (% dose difference and mm distance to agreement) within the volume enclosed by the 50% isodose surface (VOI(50)) and the 90% isodose surface (VOI(90)), respectively. All comparisons resulted in very high pass rates. More than 95% of the TPS points were within 3%/3 mm of both the gel measurement and MC simulation, both inside VOI(50) and VOI(90). Additionally, the repeated gel measurements showed excellent consistency, indicating reproducible delivery. Using MC simulations and gel measurements, this verification study successfully demonstrated that the RapidArc plan was both accurately calculated and delivered as planned

Real-time optical-fibre luminescence dosimetry for radiotherapy: physical characteristics and applications in photon beams

A new optical-fibre radiation dosimeter system, based on radioluminescence and optically stimulated luminescence from carbon-doped aluminium oxide, was developed and tested in clinical photon beams. This prototype offers several features, such as a small detector (1 x 1 x 2 mm), high sensitivity, real-time read-out and the ability to measure both dose rate and absorbed dose. The measurements describing reproducibility and output dependence on dose rate, field size and energy all had standard deviations smaller than 1%. The signal variation with the angle of incidence was smaller than 2% (1 SD). Measurements performed in clinical situations suggest the potential of using this real-time system for in vivo dosimetry in radiotherapy