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Po‐Thur Eve General‐37: Preliminary Analysis of a Cobalt‐60 Beam Under a MIMiC
Author(s) -
Rogers M,
Chng N,
Salomons G,
Kerr A,
Schreiner LJ
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.2244664
Subject(s) - tomotherapy , medical physics , collimator , dosimetry , context (archaeology) , nuclear medicine , linear particle accelerator , multileaf collimator , medicine , beam (structure) , radiation therapy , radiology , radiation treatment planning , physics , optics , paleontology , biology
Tomotherapy is a novel implementation of IMRT in which conformal dose is delivered by a fan beam of radiation that is modulated by an MLC as it revolves about a patient. The treatment geometry has the added advantage of enabling megavoltage CT (MVCT) imaging of the patient for setup verification immediately prior to treatment. Linac‐based tomotherapy units are now being rapidly adopted for clinical use. For a number of years we have been investigating the potential of using Cobalt‐60 (Co‐60) as the radiation source in tomotherapy. The ultimate goal of Co‐60 based tomotherapy is to provide the dosimetry benefits of tomotherapy while reducing the technical requirements needed to run and maintain a tomotherapy unit thus increasing the availability of tomotherapy worldwide. Previous studies with a benchtop Co‐60 unit have confirmed that conformal IMRT dose delivery is readily achievable with radiation from a Co‐60 source. Essentially, delivery concerns from beam characteristics such as wider penumbra and reduced penetration (compared to a linac beam) become insignificant in the rotational tomotherapy context. Recently we have extended our studies to a more clinically relevant implementation by adding a fan beam multi‐leaf collimator (the NOMOS MIMiC MLC) to our MDS Nordion T‐780C Co‐60 unit for serial tomotherapy. In this presentation we will discuss the challenges created by using Co‐60 for tomotherapy, present some early commissioning data and examine the subsequent steps needed to certify the unit for clinical use.