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Intravascular brachytherapy (IVBT) has been recognised as a treatment modality for reducing coronary restenosis after angioplasty and stent-implantation procedures. For the treatment of in-stent restenosis using beta-emitter (188)Re, delivering adequate doses to the entire vessel wall is not possible without the potential of overdosing tissues. A method to measure the dose distribution, perturbation and percentage depth dose using plane-parallel and cylindrical tissue-equivalent phantoms has been developed. Good agreement was found between experimental results and Monte Carlo simulation performed using MCNP4C code. The dose given to the affected area in the vascular region for intravascular radiation treatment was 15-30 Gy. Dose inhomogeneity beyond the stent surface decreased significantly with increasing radial distance. In the region close to the stent outer surface (>0.5-mm radial distance), a dose reduction of 11-17% due to the stent was observed. However, the dose perturbations due to the physical properties of metallic stents were found to be significant in IVBT for in-stent restenosis by using measured dose profiles in phantoms. The method can provide accuracy in beta isotope in vivo dosimetry results for treatments involving short-range dose distributions and provide a relatively high-level spatial resolution for detection.

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