TURKISH JOURNAL OF ONCOLOGY 2011 , Vol 26 , Num 1
The effect of segment numbers on dosimetric verification of IMRT fields obtained by the static IMRT (step and shoot) method
Hediye ACUN,1 Gönül KEMİKLER,2 Aydın ÇAKIR,2 Ebru KEMİKLER TUNCAY,3 Fulya AĞAOĞLU,3 Emin DARENDELİLER3
1Harran Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi, Biyofizik Anabilim Dalı, Şanlıurfa
2İstanbul Üniversitesi Onkoloji Enstitüsü, Radyasyon Onkolojisi Kliniği, İstanbul
3İstanbul Üniversitesi İstanbul Tıp Fakültesi, Radyasyon Onkolojisi Anabilim Dalı, İstanbul
OBJECTIVES
The goal of this work was to investigate the effect of segment number on the verification of intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) dose distributions measured with 2D array and calculated by treatment-planning system (TPS).

METHODS
Five cm depth-fluence maps calculated by TPS and measured by 2D array were compared using PTW Verisoft program for the IMRT plans of 16 prostate patients. The percentage of points passing through the (g) evaluation was found for different distance to agreement (DTA) and dose difference (DD)%.

RESULTS
When coronal fluence maps were compared, the percentage of points passing through the (g) evaluation was obtained as 98.45 (95.5-100) for the low segment group and as 86.75 (73- 94) for the high segment group for 3 mmDTA/3% DD.

CONCLUSION
The percentage of points passing through (g) evaluation was found lower for the high segment group than for the low segment group. To minimize this uncertainty in the IMRT verification, the use of a large number of segments should be avoided to the extent possible. Keywords : Intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT); dosimetric verification; 2D array; gamma index