Background:
Surface/skin dose measurement is one of the most challenging tasks for clinical dosimetry in radiotherapy and comparison with almost all the commercially available treatment planning systems (TPSs) brings a significant variation with the measured dose.
Aims and Objectives:
In the current study, doses calculated from the TPS in the near-surface region for conformal plans (both three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy [3DCRT] and intensity-modulated radiotherapy [IMRT]) of 35 breast cancer patients were evaluated and compared with the doses measured with Markus chamber.
Materials and Methods:
The computed tomography (CT) images of a solid water slab phantom with a Markus chamber (at different depths ranging from 1 mm to 5 mm from the surface) were taken and imported into the TPS. All the conformal treatment plans made in TPS were executed on a linear accelerator and dose agreements between TPS calculated and chamber measured doses were analysed.
Results:
Results showed that this TPS underestimated the calculated doses in the superficial region by up to 26% and 21%, respectively, with respect to mean and maximum dose values obtained within the effective volume of the chamber used.
Conclusion:
The uncertainty of doses in the superficial region should be kept in mind when evaluating treatment plans for superficial tumours in TPS.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.