Program Information
Dosimetric Impacts On the Mucosa and Bone in Radiotherapy with Unflattened Photon Beams
J Chow1*, A Owrangi2 , (1) Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, ON, (2) Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, ON
Presentations
SU-F-T-360 (Sunday, July 31, 2016) 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM Room: Exhibit Hall
Purpose:
This study investigated the dosimetric impacts on the mucosa and bone when using the unflattened photon beams in radiotherapy. Dose calculations were carried out by Monte Carlo simulation.
Methods:
Heterogeneous phantoms containing water (soft tissue and mucosa), air and bone, with mucosa thicknesses varying from 0.5 – 3 mm were irradiated by the 6 MV unflattened and flattened photon beams (field size = 10 x 10 cm²), produced by a Varian TrueBEAM linear accelerator. The photon energy spectra of the beams, mean bone and mucosal doses with different mucosa thicknesses were calculated using the EGSnrc Monte Carlo code.
Results:
It is found that the flattened photon beams had higher mean bone doses (1.3% and 2% for upper and lower bone regarding the phantom geometry, respectively) than the unflattened beams, and the mean bone doses of both beams did not vary significantly with the mucosa thickness. Similarly, flattened photon beams had higher mucosal dose (0.9% and 1.6% for upper and lower mucosa, respectively) than the unflattened beams. This is due to the larger slope of the depth dose for the unflattened photon beams compared to the flattened. The mucosal doses of both beams were found increased with the mucosa thickness. Moreover, the mucosal dose differences between the unflattened and flattened beams increased with the mucosa thickness. For photon energy spectra on the mucosal layers, it is found that the unflattened photon beams contained a larger portion of low-energy photons than the flattened beams. The photon energy spectra did not change significantly with the mucosa thickness.
Conclusion:
It is concluded that the mucosal and bone dose for the unflattened photon beams were not more than 2% lower than the flattened beams, though the flattening filter free beams contained larger portion of low-energy photons than the flattened beams.
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