Development and experimental validation of TPS software to determine the out-of-field dose in radiotherapy beams

Igor Bessières (1) , Bénédicte Poumarède (1) , Jean-Marc Bordy (2)

1 LM2S - Laboratoire Modélisation et Simulation de Systèmes
2 LNHB - Laboratoire National Henri Becquerel

Even if the IMRT modality allows a more accurate definition of the target volume in radiotherapy, low doses are still delivered around the tumour to organs at risk. Epidemiological studies demonstrated the relationship between peripheral doses and second cancers or heart diseases. Our aim is to develop a MC tool based on the PENELOPE code to compute the dose at the target volume and the organs at risk in order to enable a decrease of the peripheral dose by adapting the treatment's parameters. This tool will be implemented in a Treatment Planning System (TPS). In this paper we expose the first validation step of the out-of-field MC calculations, using a comparison with measurements in a specific large water tank.

Keywords: radiotherapy; treatment planning system; TPS; dosimetry; OSL dosimeter; dose measurement; ionizing radiation; modelling; simulation; PENELOPE; Monte Carlo; particle transport; tumour; out-of-field dose

Domains: Medical Physics [physics.med-ph]; Modeling and Simulation; Methodology [stat.ME]; Cancer

Igor Bessières, Bénédicte Poumarède, Jean-Marc Bordy. Development and experimental validation of TPS software to determine the out-of-field dose in radiotherapy beams. Third European Workshop on Monte Carlo Treatment Planning (EWG-MCTP 2012), May 2012, Sevilla, Spain. ⟨cea-02620216⟩