The standard dosimetry systems based on an absorbed dose to water recommend to use a planeparallel chamber for the calibration of such a low-megavoltage electron beam as a nominal energy of 6 MeV. For this energy ranges of an electron beam a cylindrical chamber should not be used for the routinely regular beam calibration, but the feasibility of the temporary use of a cylindrical chamber was studied to give temporary solutions for special situations users meet. The PTW30013 chambers and the electron beam quality of R(50)=2.25 g/cm2 were selected for this study. 10 PTW30013 chambers, a cylindrical type of chamber, were calibrated in KFDA, the secondary standards dosimetry laboratories, and given the absorbed dose-to-water calibration factors, respectively. A "temporary" kappa(Q,Q0) for each chamber were calculated using the absorbed dose determined by a cross-calibrated planeparallel chamber, with the result of an average 0.9352 for 10 chambers. This value for PTW30013 chamber was used to determine an absorbed dose to water at the reference depth. The absorbed doses determined by PTW30013 chambers were in an agreement within 2% with that by ROOS chamber. In a certain situation where a cylindrical chamber be used instead of a planeparellel chamber, the value of 0.9352 might be useful to determine an absorbed dose to water in the same beam quality of electron beam as this study.
Calibration ; Electrons ; Water

The quality factors for cylindrical ionization chambers for kV X-rays were determined by Monte Carlo calculation and measurement. In this study, the X-rays of 60~300 kV beam (ISO-4037) installed in KFDA and specified in energy spectra and beam qualities, and the chambers of PTW N23333 and N30001 were investigated. In calculations, the k(u) and k(Q,Q(0)) in IAEA dosimetry protocols were determined from the air kerma and the cavity dose obtained by theoretical and Monte Carlo calculations. It is shown that the N30001 chamber has a flat response of +/-1.7% in 110~300 kV region, while the response range of two chambers were shown to +/-3~4% in 80~250 kV region. From this work we have discussed dosimetry protocol for the kV X-rays and we have found that the estimation of energy dependency is more important to apply dosimetry protocol for kV X-rays.

For the measurements of an absorbed dose using the standard dosimetry based on an absorbed dose to water the variety of factors, whether big, small, or tiny, may influence the accuracy of dosimetry. The beam quality correction factor kappa(Q, Q(0))of an ionization chamber might also be one of them. The cylindrical type of ionization chamber, the PTW30013 chamber, was chosen for this work and 9 chambers of the same type were collected from several institutes where the chamber types are used for the reference dosimetry. They were calibrated from the domestic Secondary Standard Dosimetry Laboratory with the same electrometer and cable. These calibrated chambers were used to measure absorbed doses to water in the reference condition for the photon beam of 6 MV and 10 MV and the electron beam of 12 MeV from Siemens ONCOR. The biggest difference among chambers amounts to 2.4% for the 6 MV photon beam, 0.8% for the 10 MV photon beam, and 2.4% for the 12 MeV electron beam. The big deviation in the photon of 6 MV demonstrates that if there had been no problems with the process of measurements application of the same kappa(Q, Q(0)) to the chambers used in this study might have influenced the deviation in the photon 6 MV and that how important an external audit is.
Academies and Institutes ; Electrons ; Water

We have taken surveys about total 72 departments of radiation oncology which is performing the treatment with linear accelerator and brachytherapy unit in Korea. The survey was included the research about the linear accelerator, brachytherapy, Also, we surveyed the various performance (QA period, manpower, time) of quality control for understanding of efficiency. The survey results show that the QA test of daily and weekly are almost same comparing to USA and Europe but the QA performance of monthly and yearly in Korea are 15.5 which is less than USA and Europe recommended QA item number of 17 to 21. The manpower and QA time in Korea also lower than 50% of USA and Europe recommended because the manpower and QA time limitation in Korea. It will be expected that the manual of quality management in each clinic could be appropriately established when combining the present results with previously published AAPM TG-40 and other protocols.
Brachytherapy ; Europe ; Korea ; Particle Accelerators ; Quality Control ; Radiation Oncology

We developed a user-friendly program to independently verify monitor units (MUs) calculated by radiation treatment planning systems (RTPS), as well as to manage beam database in clinic. The off-axis factor, beam hardening effect, inhomogeneity correction, and the different depth correction were incorporated into the program algorithm to improve the accuracy in calculated MUs. A beam database in the program was supposed to use measured data from routine quality assurance (QA) processes for timely update. To enhance user's convenience, a graphic user interface (GUI) was developed by using Visual Basic for Application. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the program for various treatment conditions, the MU comparisons were made for 213 cases of phantom and for 108 cases of 17 patients treated by 3D conformal radiation therapy. The MUs calculated by the program and calculated by the RTPS showed a fair agreement within +/-3% for the phantom and +/-5% for the patient, except for the cases of extreme inhomogeneity. By using Visual Basic for Application and Microsoft Excel worksheet interface, the program can automatically generate beam data book for clinical reference and the comparison template for the beam data management. The program developed in this study can be used to verify the accuracy of RTPS for various treatment conditions and thus can be used as a tool of routine RTPS QA, as well as independent MU checks. In addition, its beam database management interface can update beam data periodically and thus can be used to monitor multiple beam databases efficiently.
Animals ; Humans ; Mice ; Organothiophosphorus Compounds ; Software

To acquire good image quality and to minimize unnecessary radiation dose to patients, it is important to ensure that the radiopharmaceutical administered is accurately measured. Quality control of radionuclide calibrators should be performed to achieve these goals. The purpose of this study is to support the quality control of radionuclide calibrators in nuclear medicine centers and to investigate the level of measurement accuracy of the radionuclide calibrators. 58 radionuclide calibrators from 45 nuclear medicine centers, 74 radionuclide calibrators from 58 nuclear medicine centers, and 60 radionuclide calibrators from 45 nuclear medicine centers were tested with I-131, Tc-99m and I-123, respectively. The results showed that 81% of calibrators for I-131, 61% of calibrators for Tc-99m and 67% of calibrators for I-123 were within +/-5%. 17% of calibrators for I-131, 20% of calibrators for Tc-99m and 15% of calibrators for I-123 had a deviation in the range 5%<|delta|< or =10%. 2% of calibrators for I-131, 19% of calibrators for Tc-99m and 18% of calibrators for I-123 had a deviation of |delta|>10%. Follow-up measurements were performed on the calibrators whose error exceeded the +/-10% limit. As a result, some of the calibrator showed an improvement and their deviation decreased below the +/-10% limit. The results have shown that such comparisons are necessary to improve the accuracy of the measurement and to identify malfunctioning radionuclide calibrators.
Dietary Sucrose ; Follow-Up Studies ; Humans ; Nuclear Medicine ; Quality Control ; Radioactivity

A head-and-neck phantom was designed in order to evaluate remotely the quality of the delivery dose of intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) in each institution. The phantom is homogeneous or inhomogeneous by interchanging the phantom material with the substructure like an air or bone plug. Monte Carlo simulations were executed for one beam and three beams to the phantom and compared with ion chamber and thermoluminescent dosimeter (TLD) measurements of which readings were from two independent institutions. For single beam, the ion chamber results and the MC simulations agreed to within about 2%. TLDs agreed with the MC results to within 2% or 7% according to which institution read the TLDs. For three beams, the ion chamber results showed -5% maximum discrepancy and those of TLDs were +2~+3%. The accuracy of the TLD readings should be increased for the remote dose monitoring. MC simulations are a valuable tool to acquire the reliability of the measurements in developing a new phantom.
Pilot Projects* ; Reading

PURPOSE: In order to enhance the quality of IMRT as employed in Korea, we developed a remote monitoring system. The feasibility of the system was evaluated by conducting a pilot study. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The remote monitoring system consisted of a head and neck phantom and a user manual. The phantom contains a target and three OARs (organs at risk) that can be detected on CT images. TLD capsules were inserted at the center of the target and at the OARs. Two film slits for GafchromicEBT film were located on the axial and saggital planes. The user manual contained an IMRT planning guide and instructions for IMRT planning and the delivery process. After the manual and phantom were sent to four institutions, IMRT was planed and delivered. Predicted doses were compared with measured doses. Dose distribution along the two straight lines that intersected at the center of the axial film was measured and compared with the profiles predicted by the plan. RESULTS: The measurements at the target agreed with the predicted dose within a 3% deviation. Doses at the OARs that represented the thyroid glands showed larger deviations (minimum 3.3% and maximum 19.8%). The deviation at OARs that represented the spiral cord was 0.7~14.8%. The percentage of dose distributions that showed more than a 5% of deviation on the lines was 7~27% and 7~14% along the horizontal and vertical lines, respectively. CONCULSION: Remote monitoring of IMRT using the developed system was feasible. With remote monitoring, the deviation at the target is expected to be small while the deviation at the OARs can be very large. Therefore, a method that is able to investigate the cause of a large deviation needs to be developed. In addition, a more clinically relevant measure for the two-dimensional dose comparison and pass/fail criteria need to be further developed.
Capsules ; Head* ; Korea ; Neck* ; Pilot Projects* ; Thyroid Gland