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Abstract
Intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) is a 3D conformal radiation therapy technique that utilizes either a multileaf intensity-modulating collimator (MIMiC used with the NOMOS Peacock system) or a multileaf collimator (MLC) on a conventional linear accelerator for beam intensity modulation to afford increased conformity in dose distributions. Due to the high-dose gradient regions that are effectively created, particular emphasis should be placed in the accurate determination of pencil beam kernels that are utilized by pencil beam convolution algorithms employed by a number of commercial IMRT treatment planning systems (TPS). These kernels are determined from relatively large field dose profiles that are typically collected using an ion chamber during commissioning of the TPS, while recent studies have demonstrated improvements in dose calculation accuracy when incorporating film data into the commissioning measurements.
For this study, it has been proposed that the shape of high-resolution dose kernels can be extracted directly from single pencil beam (beamlet) profile measurements acquired using high-precision dosimetric film in order to accurately compute dose distributions, specifically for small fields and the penumbra regions of the larger fields. The effectiveness of GafChromic EBT film as an appropriate dosimeter to acquire the necessary measurements was evaluated and compared to the conventional silver-halide Kodak EDR2 film. Using the NOMOS Peacock system, similar dose kernels were extracted through deconvolution of the elementary pencil beam profiles using the two different types of films. Independent convolution-based calculations were performed using these kernels, resulting in better agreement with the measured relative dose profiles, as compared to those determined by CORVUS TPS' finite-size pencil beam (FSPB) algorithm. Preliminary evaluation of the proposed method in performing kernel extraction for an MLC-based IMRT system also showed promise that can be realized during the further development of the present work.
