Leaf transmission reduction using moving jaws for dynamic MLC IMRT

Schmidhalter, D; Fix, M K; Niederer, P; Mini, R; Manser, P (2007). Leaf transmission reduction using moving jaws for dynamic MLC IMRT. Medical physics, 34(9), pp. 3674-87. College Park, Md.: American Association of Physicists in Medicine AAPM 10.1118/1.2768864

Full text not available from this repository.

The aim of this work is to investigate to what extent it is possible to use the secondary collimator jaws to reduce the transmitted radiation through the multileaf collimator (MLC) during an intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). A method is developed and introduced where the jaws follow the open window of the MLC dynamically (dJAW method). With the aid of three academic cases (Closed MLC, Sliding-gap, and Chair) and two clinical cases (prostate and head and neck) the feasibility of the dJAW method and the influence of this method on the applied dose distributions are investigated. For this purpose the treatment planning system Eclipse and the Research-Toolbox were used as well as measurements within a solid water phantom were performed. The transmitted radiation through the closed MLC leads to an inhomogeneous dose distribution. In this case, the measured dose within a plane perpendicular to the central axis differs up to 40% (referring to the maximum dose within this plane) for 6 and 15 MV. The calculated dose with Eclipse is clearly more homogeneous. For the Sliding-gap case this difference is still up to 9%. Among other things, these differences depend on the depth of the measurement within the solid water phantom and on the application method. In the Chair case, the dose in regions where no dose is desired is locally reduced by up to 50% using the dJAW method instead of the conventional method. The dose inside the chair-shaped region decreased up to 4% if the same number of monitor units (MU) as for the conventional method was applied. The undesired dose in the volume body minus the planning target volume in the clinical cases prostate and head and neck decreased up to 1.8% and 1.5%, while the number of the applied MU increased up to 3.1% and 2.8%, respectively. The new dJAW method has the potential to enhance the optimization of the conventional IMRT to a further step.

Item Type:	Journal Article (Original Article)
Division/Institute:	04 Faculty of Medicine > Department of Haematology, Oncology, Infectious Diseases, Laboratory Medicine and Hospital Pharmacy (DOLS) > Clinic of Radiation Oncology > Medical Radiation Physics
UniBE Contributor:	Schmidhalter, Daniel, Fix, Michael, Mini, Roberto, Manser, Peter
ISSN:	0094-2405
ISBN:	17926971
Publisher:	American Association of Physicists in Medicine AAPM
Language:	English
Submitter:	Factscience Import
Date Deposited:	04 Oct 2013 14:56
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2022 14:17
Publisher DOI:	10.1118/1.2768864
PubMed ID:	17926971
Web of Science ID:	000249547200030
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/24107 (FactScience: 46994)