• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.302-304
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• 2002

In linac-based stereotactic radiosurgery, assuring the quality of the planning and delivery of external photon beam requires accurate evaluation of beam parameters, usually including output factors, tissue-phantom ratio and off-axis ratios, and measurement of actual dose distributions from simulated treatment. We're going to test the use of calibrated radio chromic film (Gafchromic film; type MD-55, Nuclear associate) using a Lumiscan 75 digitizer to measure absolute dose and relative dose distributions for linac-based radiosurgery unit Relative dose distribution of a human-style spherical acryl phantom were measured using radiochromic film and calculated by treatment planning system. The absolute dose at the sphere center was measured by radiochromic film and micro chamber (Exradin A-14, 0.009cc). What we want to demonstrate in this work, the 'well selected' radiochromic films when external photon beam are used in linac-based stereotactic radiosurgery are very accurate detector for dosimetry.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.234-238
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• 2012

A tumor on the eyelid is often treated using a high-energy electron beam, with a metallic eye shield inserted between the eyelid and the eyeball to preserve the patient's sight. Pretreatment quality assurance of the inner eyelid dose on the metallic shield requires a very small dosimetry tool. For enhanced accuracy, a flexible device fitting the curved interface between the eyelid and the shield is also required. The radiochromic film is the best candidate for this device. To measure the doses along the curved interface and small area, a 3-mm-wide strip of EBT2 film was inserted between the phantom eyelid and the shield. After irradiation with 6 MeV electron beams, the film was evaluated for the dose profile. An acrylic eye shield of the same size as the real eye shield was machined, and CT images free from metal artifacts were obtained. Monte Carlo simulation was performed on the CT images, taking into account eye shield material, such as tungsten, aluminum, and steel. The film-based interface dose distribution agreed with the MC calculation within 2.1%. In the small (millimeter scale) and curved region, radiochromic film dosimetry promises a satisfactory result with easy handling.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.179-184
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• 2021

This study aimed to determine the optimal thickness of the active layer and scan mode for a flexible radiochromic film (F-RCF) based on the active lithium salt of pentacosa-10,12-diynoic acid (LiPCDA). F-RCFs of 90, 120, 140, and 170-㎛ thickness were fabricated using LiPCDA. Several pieces of the F-RCFs were exposed to doses ranging from 0 to 3 Gy. Transmission and reflection modes were used to scan the irradiated F-RCFs. Their dose-response curves were obtained using a second-order polynomial equation. Their sensitivity was evaluated for both scanning modes, and the uniformity of the batch was also examined. For both the transmission and reflection modes, the sensitivity increased as the film thickness increased. For the reflection mode, the dose response increased dramatically under 1 Gy. The value of the net optical density varied rapidly as the thickness of the film increased. However, the dose-response curves showed a supralinear-curve relationship at doses greater than 2 Gy. The sensitivity of the reflection scan at doses greater than 2 Gy was higher than that of the reflection scan within 0-2 Gy. The sensitivity steadily decreased with increasing doses, and the sensitivity of the two modes was within 0.1 to 0.2 at 2 Gy and was saturated beyond that. For the transmission scan, the sensitivity was approximately 0.2 at 3 Gy. For the intra-batch test result, the maximum net optical density difference of the intra-batch was 5.5% at 2 Gy and 7.4% at 0.2 Gy in the transmission and reflection scans, respectively. In the low-dose range, film thickness of more than 120-㎛ was proper in the transmission mode. In contrast, the transmission mode showed a better result compared to the reflection mode. Therefore, the proper scan mode should be selected according to the dose range.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.175-184
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• 1998

The dose distribution evaluation program for the stereotactic radiosurgery treatment planning system using a gamma knife has been built in order to work on PC. And this custom-made dose distribution is compared with that of commercial treatment planning program. 201 source position of a radiation unit were determined manually using a gamma knife collimator draft and geometrical coordinates. Dose evaluation algorithm was modified for our purpose from the original KULA, a commercial treatment planning program. With the composed program, dose distribution at the center of a spherical phantom, 80 mm in diameter, was evaluated into axial, coronal and sagittal image per each collimator. Along with this evaluated data, the dose distribution at a arbitrary point of inside the phantom was compared with those from KULA. Radiochromic film was set up at the center of the phantom and was irradiated by gamma knife, for the verification of dose distribution. In result, the deviation of the dose distribution from that of KULA is less than ${\pm}$3%, which is equivalent to ${\pm}$0.3 mm in 50% isodose distribution for all examined coordinates and film verification. The custom-made program, GPl is proven to be a good tool for the stereotactic radiosurgery treatment planning program.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.113-115
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• 2002

The Monte Carlo simulation method is a numerical solution to a problem that models objects interacting with other objects or their environment based upon simple object-object or object-environment relationships. In spite of its great accuracy, It was turned away because of long calculation time to simulate a model. But, it is used to simulate a linear accelerator frequently with the advance of computer technology. To simulate linear accelerator in Monte Carlo simulations, there are many parameters needed to input to Monte Carlo code. These data can be supported by a linear accelerator manufacturer. Although the model of a linear accelerator is the same, a different characteristic property can be found. Thus, we performed a commissioning process of 6MV photon beam in Varian 2300C/D model with BEAM/EGS4 Monte Carlo code. The head geometry data were put into BEAM/EGS4 data. The mean energy and energy spread of the electron beam incident on the target were varied to match Monte Carlo simulations to measurements. TLDs (thermoluminescent dosimeter) and radiochromic films were employed to measure the absorbed dose in a water phantom. Beam profile was obtained in 40cm${\times}$40cm field size and Depth dose was in 10cm${\times}$10cm. At first, we compared the depth dose between measurements and Monte Carlo simulations varying the mean energy of an incident electron beam. Then, we compared the beam profile with adjusting the beam radius of the incident electron beam in Monte Carlo simulation. The results were found that the optimal mean energy was 6MV and beam radius of 0.1mm was well matched to measurements.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.80-87
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• 2022

Purpose: Proton therapy has different relative biological effectiveness (RBE) compared with X-ray treatment, which is the standard in radiation therapy, and the fixed RBE value of 1.1 is widely used. However, RBE depends on a charged particle's linear energy transfer (LET); therefore, measuring LET is important. We have developed a LET measurement method using the inefficiency characteristic of an EBT3 film on a proton beam's Bragg peak (BP) region. Methods: A Gafchromic EBT3 film was used to measure the proton beam LET. It measured the dose at a 10-cm pristine BP proton beam in water to determine the quenching factor of the EBT3 film as a reference beam condition. Monte Carlo (MC) calculations of dose-averaged LET (LET_d) were used to determine the quenching factor and validation. The dose-averaged LETs at the 12-, 16-, and 20-cm pristine BP proton beam in water were calculated with the quenching factor. Results: Using the passive scattering proton beam nozzle of the National Cancer Center in Korea, the LET_d was measured for each beam range. The quenching factor was determined to be 26.15 with 0.3% uncertainty under the reference beam condition. The dose-averaged LETs were measured for each test beam condition. Conclusions: We developed a method for measuring the proton beam LET using an EBT3 film. This study showed that the magnitude of the quenching effect can be estimated using only one beam range, and the quenching factor determined under the reference condition can be applied to any therapeutic proton beam range.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.141-143
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• 2002

In 1995, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Task Group 43 published a report dealing with the dosimetry of interstitial brachytherapy sources, generally known as the TG-43 report. Compared to previously adopted formalisms, a formalism proposed in this report provides a more accurate and systematic brachytherapy dose calculation method, especially for Ir-192 and other low energy gamma sources such as 1-125 and Pd-l03. In this lecture, an overview of the TG-43 formalism will be presented, along with the lecturer's experience in determining the TG-43 parameters by the Monte Carlo method and experimental methods such as TLD and radiochromic film.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.670-679
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• 2010

In this paper, a new approach using a pixel-based correction method was developed to fix the non-uniform responses of flat-bed type scanners used for radiochromic film dosimetry. In order to validate the method's performance, two cases were tested: the first consisted of simple dose distributions delivered by a single port; the second was a complicated dose distribution composed of multiple beams. In the case of the simple individual dose condition, ten different doses, from 8.3 cGy to 307.1 cGy, were measured, horizontal profiles were analyzed using the pixel-based correcton method and compared with results measured by an ionization chamber and results corrected using the existing correction method. A complicated inverse pyramid dose distribution was made by piling up four different field shapes, which were measured with GAFCHROMIC$^{(R)}$EBT film and compared with the Monte Carlo calculation; as well as the dose distribution corrected using a conventional method. The results showed that a pixel-based correction method reduced dose difference from the reference measurement down to 1% in the flat dose distribution region or 2 mm in a steep dose gradient region compared to the reference data, which were ionization chamber measurement data for simple cases and the MC computed data for the complicated case, with an exception for very low doses of less than about 10 cGy in the simple case. Therefore, the pixel-based scanner correction method is expected to enhance the accuracy of GAFCHROMIC$^{(R)}$EBT film dosimetry, which is a widely used tool for two-dimensional dosimetry.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.157-164
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to analyze the dose distribution when wedge filter is used in the various tissue electron density materials. The dose distribution was assessed that the enhanced dynamic wedge filter and physical wedge filter were used in the solid water phantom, cork phantom, and air cavity. The film dosimetry was suitable simple to measure 2D dose distribution. Therefore, the radiochromic films (Gafchromic EBT2, ISP, NJ, USA) were selected to measure and to analyze the dose distributions. A linear accelerator using 6 MV photon were irradiated to field size of $10{\times}10cm^2$ with 400 MUs. The dose distributions of EBT2 films were analyzed the in-field area and penumbra regions by using dose analysis program. In the dose distributions of wedge field, the dose from a physical wedge was higher than that from a dynamic wedge at the same electron density materials. A dose distributions of wedge type in the solid water phantom and the cork phantom were in agreements with 2%. However, the dose distribution in air cavity showed the large difference with those in the solid water phantom or cork phantom dose distributions. Dose distribution of wedge field in air cavity was not shown the wedge effect. The penumbra width, out of the field of thick and thin, was observed larger from 1 cm to 2 cm at the thick end. The penumbra of physical wedge filter was much larger average 6% than the dynamic wedge filter. If the physical wedge filter is used, the dose was increased to effect the scatter that interacted with photon and physical wedge. In the case of difference in electron like the soft tissue, lung, and air, the transmission, absorption, and scattering were changed in the medium at high energy photon. Therefore, the treatment at the difference electron density should be inhomogeneity correction in treatment planning system.

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.32
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• pp.93-109
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• 2020

Purpose: The radiochromic film (Gafchromic EBT3, Ashland Advanced Materials, USA) and 3-dimensional analysis system dosimetry checkTM (DC, MathResolutions, USA) were evaluated for patient-specific quality assurance (QA) of helical tomotherapy. Materials and Methods: Depending on the tumors' positions, three types of targets, which are the abdominal tumor (130.6㎤), retroperitoneal tumor (849.0㎤), and the whole abdominal metastasis tumor (3131.0㎤) applied to the humanoid phantom (Anderson Rando Phantom, USA). We established a total of 12 comparative treatment plans by the four geometric conditions of the beam irradiation, which are the different field widths (FW) of 2.5-cm, 5.0-cm, and pitches of 0.287, 0.43. Ionization measurements (1D) with EBT3 by inserting the cheese phantom (2D) were compared to DC measurements of the 3D dose reconstruction on CT images from beam fluence log information. For the clinical feasibility evaluation of the DC, dose reconstruction has been performed using the same cheese phantom with the EBT3 method. Recalculated dose distributions revealed the dose error information during the actual irradiation on the same CT images quantitatively compared to the treatment plan. The Thread effect, which might appear in the Helical Tomotherapy, was analyzed by ripple amplitude (%). We also performed gamma index analysis (DD: 3mm/ DTA: 3%, pass threshold limit: 95%) for pattern check of the dose distribution. Results: Ripple amplitude measurement resulted in the highest average of 23.1% in the peritoneum tumor. In the radiochromic film analysis, the absolute dose was on average 0.9±0.4%, and gamma index analysis was on average 96.4±2.2% (Passing rate: >95%), which could be limited to the large target sizes such as the whole abdominal metastasis tumor. In the DC analysis with the humanoid phantom for FW of 5.0-cm, the three regions' average was 91.8±6.4% in the 2D and 3D plan. The three planes (axial, coronal, and sagittal) and dose profile could be analyzed with the entire peritoneum tumor and the whole abdominal metastasis target, with planned dose distributions. The dose errors based on the dose-volume histogram in the DC evaluations increased depending on FW and pitch. Conclusion: The DC method could implement a dose error analysis on the 3D patient image data by the measured beam fluence log information only without any dosimetry tools for patient-specific quality assurance. Also, there may be no limit to apply for the tumor location and size; therefore, the DC could be useful in patient-specific QAl during the treatment of Helical Tomotherapy of large and irregular tumors.