Quality control of radiotherapy treatment plans with electrons

Abstract

In this work the quality of the treatment planning generated by EclipseÒ commercial treatment planning system for electron beams of energy 9 and 20 MeV was verified and their accuracy in the calculation of dose distributions for several clinical situations was evaluated. Tests cases had been developed according to the Brazilian reality, having as reference the radiotherapy treatments carried out in the National Institute of the Cancer.The system developed for checking the quality of treatment planning systems with electrons was efficient in evaluating the Eclipse planning system by identifying the failures of their algorithms, especially in planning the isodose. The verification system has been validated against the Monte Carlo method and the experimental data with an ionization chamber and showed the shortcomings of generalized pencil beam and eMC algorithms.

Keywords

• radiotherapy
• Monte Carlo dosimetry
• EGSnrc.