Open AccessDifferent intensity extension methods and their impact on entrance dose in breast radiotherapy: A study
Author(s) -
A Sankar,
J Velmurugan
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of medical physics/journal of medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.292
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1998-3913
pISSN - 0971-6203
DOI - 10.4103/0971-6203.56079
Subject(s) - flashing , intensity (physics) , flash (photography) , radiation therapy , medicine , nuclear medicine , materials science , optics , physics , radiology , metallurgy
In breast radiotherapy, skin flashing of treatment fields is important to account for intrafraction movements and setup errors. This study compares the two different intensity extension methods, namely, Virtual Bolus method and skin flash tool method, to provide skin flashing in intensity modulated treatment fields. The impact of these two different intensity extension methods on skin dose was studied by measuring the entrance dose of the treatment fields using semiconductor diode detectors. We found no significant difference in entrance dose due to different methods used for intensity extension. However, in the skin flash tool method, selection of appropriate parameters is important to get optimum fluence extension.