Program Information
Dosimetric Evaluation of Breast Tissue Composition for Electronic Brachytherapy (BET) Source In High Dose Rate Accelerated Partial Breast (APBI) Irradiation
W Taylor*, D Johnson , S Ahmad , Y Chen , University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK
Presentations
SU-F-T-58 (Sunday, July 31, 2016) 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM Room: Exhibit Hall
Purpose: To quantitatively evaluate the dosimetric impact of differing breast tissue compositions for electronic brachytherapy source for high dose rate accelerated partial breast irradiation.
Methods: A series of Monte Carlo Simulation were created using the GEANT4 toolkit (version 10.0). The breast phantom was modeled as a semi-circle with a radius of 5.0 cm. A water balloon with a radius of 1.5 cm was located in the phantom with the Xoft AxxentTM EBT source placed at center as a point source. A mixed of two tissue types (adipose and glandular tissue) was assigned as the materials for the breast phantom with different weight ratios. The proportionality of glandular and adipose tissue was simulated in four different fashions, 80/20, 70/30, 50/50 and 30/70 respectively. The custom energy spectrum for the 50 kVp XOFT source was provided via the manufacturer and used to generate incident photons. The dose distributions were recorded using a parallel three dimensional mesh with a size of 30 x 30 x 30 cm3 with 1 x 1 x 1 mm3 voxels. The simulated doses absorbed along the transverse axis were normalized at the distance of 1 cm and then compared with the calculations using standard TG-43 formalism.
Results: All simulations showed underestimation of dose beyond balloon surface compared to standard TG-43 calculations. The maximum percentage differences within 2 cm distance from balloon surface were found to be 18%, 11%, 10% and 8% for the fat breast (30/70), standard breast (50/50), dense breast (70/30 and 80/20), respectively.
Conclusion: The accuracy of dose calculations for low energy EBT source was limited when considering tissue heterogeneous composition. The impact of atomic number on photo-electric effect for lower energy Brachytherapy source is not accounted for and resulting in significant errors in dose calculation.
Contact Email: