Dosimetry of Brachytherapy Sources: Review of The AAPM TG-43 Formalism

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.