A Study on clinical Considerations caused by inevitably Extended SSD for Electron beam therapy

확장된 SSD에 기인한 Electron beam의 Output 및 특성 변화에 관한 연구

We are often faced with the clinical situations that is inevitably extended SSD for electron beam therapy due to anatomical restriction or applicator structure. But there are some difficulties in accurately predicting output and properties. In electron beam treatment , unlike photon beam the decrease in output for extended SSD does not follow inverse-square law accurately because of a loss of side scatter equilibrium, which is particularly significant for small cone size and low energies. The purpose of our study is to analyze the output in changing with the energy, cone size, air gap beyond the standard SSD and to compare inverse-square law factor derived from calculated effective SSD, mominal SSD with measured output factor. In addition, we have analyzed the change of PDD for several cones with different SSDs which range from 100cm to 120cm with 5cm step and with different energies(6MeV, 9MeV, 12MeV, 16MeV, 20MeV). In accordance with our study, an extended SSD produces a significant change in beam output, negligible change in depth dose which range from 100cm to 120cm SSDs. In order to deliver the more accurate dose to the neoplastic tissue, first of all we recommend inverse-square law using the table of effective SSDs with cone sizes and energies respectively or simply to create a table of extended SSD air gap correction factor. The second we need to have an insight into some change of dose distribution including PPD, penumbra caused by extended SSD for electron beam therapy.