• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.181-186
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• 2006

A radiophotoluminescent glass rod detector (GRD) system has recently become commercially available. We investigate the dosimetric properties of the GRD regarding the reproducibility of signal, dose linearity and energy dependence. The reproducibility of five measurements for 50 GRDs is presented by an average of one standard deviation of each GRD and it is ${\pm}1.2%$. It is found to be linear in response to doses of $^{60}Co$ beam in the range 0.5 to 50 Gy with a coefficient of linearity of 0.9998. The energy dependence of the GRD is determined by comparing the dose obtained using cylindrical chamber to that by using the GRD. The GRD response for each beam is normalized to the response for a $^{60}Co$ beam. The responses for 6 and 15 MV x-ray beams are within ${\pm}1.5%$ (1SD). The energy response of GRD for high-energy photon is almost the same as the energy dependence of LiF:Mg:Ti (TLD-100)and shows little energy dependence unlike p-type silicon diode detector. The GRDs have advantages over other detectors such diode detector, and TLD: linearity, reproducibility and energy dependency. It has been verified to be an effective device for small field dosimetry for stereotactic radiosurgery.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.841-848
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• 2020

In the field of radiation therapy using photon beams and electron beams, since each patient has a different sensitivity to radiation, skin side effects may occur even at the same dose. Therefore, if there is a risk of excessive dose to the skin, a dosimeter is attached to verify whether the correct dose is being investigated. However, since the skin dosimeter checks the attachment site visually by measuring a point dose, it is difficult to confirm an accurate dose distribution. As a result, the measurement and simulation errors of the material HgI₂ in the 6 MV photon beam were 3.73% and 5.24%, respectively, at the minimum thickness of 25 ㎛, and the material PbI₂ was 4.73% and 5.65%, respectively. On the other hand, as a result of the 6 MeV electron beam, the measurement and simulation errors of the material HgI₂ were 1.35% and 1.12%, respectively, at a minimum thickness of 25 ㎛, and the material PbI₂ showed relatively low attenuation error, 1.67% and 1.20%, respectively. Therefore, it was evaluated that the thickness of the photon beam within 25 ㎛ and the electron beam within 100 ㎛ is suitable to have a reduction rate error within 5%. This study presents a new research direction for a flexible dosimeter attached to the human body that is required in clinical practice and the construction conditions of a future skin dosimeter.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 1996

The response function of ionization chambers are measured in the narrow radiation field Nominal photon energies are 4MV, 6MV and 15MV. the Radii of the chambers are 0.5cm～3.05cm and the field size is 0.2$\times$20$\textrm{cm}^2$. The measurements are taken in the water phantom at 10cm depth. The beam kernel (radiation distribution profile) for narrow radiation field in the phantom are obtained from Monte Carlo simulation (EGS4, Electron Gamma Shower 4). The beam kernel components in the measured chamber response function are deconvolved in order to get the ideal chamber response function of the $\delta$-shaped function radiation field. The chamber response functions have energy dependent tendency before deconvolution, while they show energy invariant properties, after the components of beam kernels are removed by deconvolution method.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.185-192
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• 1998

It is necessarily to evaluate the energy of X-ray emitted from linear accelerator in order to determine the accurate absorbed dose. The method of direct measurement for x-ray energy is very difficult and impractical. Therefore the method of using beam quality index is generally used. Several dosimetry protocols recommend the use of quality indices such as depth of dose maximum at radiation central axis, dose gradient, and dose level. The linear accelerator manufactures follow the recommendation as dosimetry protocols. The study was performed for us to select the most suitable parameter among the Quality indices as described above. For photon beams of 4, 6, 10, 15, and 21 MV nominal energies produced by four kinds of accelerators(Mitsubishi, Scanditronix, Siemens, Varian) in eleven institutions, We evaluated the x-ray energies obtained by the Quality indices as recommended by several dosimetry protocols and manufactures. Results showed that there were energy spreads according to the same accelerators and Quality indices even though nominal energies were same. It appeared that the percent depth dose at 10 cm (D$_{10}$(%)) gave the smallest deviation and spread of energies. As energies increased, the energy deviation increased for all the quality indices. It is desirable for the use of unified quality index to compare the evaluation of beam quality at different institutions.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.105-113
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• 1998

Accurate radiation dosimetric characters is very important to determine of dose to a radiotherapeutic patient. Medical linear accelerators have been developed not only its new quality of convenient operation but also electric moderation. It is reliable to measure more detail physical parameter that linac's internal ability. Typically, radiation dosimetric tool is classified ionization chamber, film, thermoluminescence dosimeter, etc. Nowaday, Electronic Portal Imaging Device is smeared in radiation field to verification of treatment region. EPID's image was focused that using both on-line image verification and absolutely minimum absorbed dose during radiotherapy. So, Electronic Portal Imaging was tested for quality evaluation of medical linear accelerator had its pure conditional flash. This study has performed symmetry, Light/Radiation field congruence, and energy check, geometry difference on wedge filter using a liquid filled ion chamber (EPID). Prior to irradiated on EPID, high energy photon beam is checked with ion chamber. Using these results more convenient dosimetric method is accomplished by EPID that taken digital image. Medical image is acquired with EPID too. Therefore, EPID can be analyzed by numerical information for what want to see or get more knowledge for natural human condition.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-5
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• 2006

A parallel plate detector containing PTFE films in FEP film for relative dosimetry was designed to measure the response of detectors to S and 10 MV X-rays from a medical linear accelerator through different thicknesses of lead. The dielectric materials were 100 m thick. The set-up conditions for measurements with this detector were as follows: SSD=100 cm the test detector was at a depth of 5 cm and the reference chamber was at a depth of 10 cm from the phantom surface for 6 and 10 MV X-rays. Lead blocks were designed to cover the irradiated field. They were added to the tray to increase thickness sequentially. We found that the detector response decreased exponentially with the thickness of lead added. The linear attenuation coefficients of the test detector and reference chamber were 0.1414 and 0.541, respectively, for 6 MV X-rays and 0.1358 and 0.5279 for 10 MV X-rays. The test detector response was greater than that of the reference chamber. The response function was calculated from the measured values of the test detector and reference chamber using optimization. These optimized constants for the detector response function were independent of theenergy. As a result of optimizing the response function between detectors, the use of a relative dosimeter was validated, because the response of the test detector was 1% for 6 MV X-rays and 4% for 10 MV X-rays.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.149-155
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• 2002

Recent advances in radiation transport algorithms, computer hardware performance, and parallel computing make the clinical use of Monte Carlo based dose calculations possible. To compare the speed and accuracies of dose calculations between different developed codes, a benchmark tests were proposed at the XIIth ICCR (International Conference on the use of Computers in Radiation Therapy, Heidelberg, Germany 2000). A Monte Carlo treatment planning comprised of 28 various Intel Pentium CPUs was implemented for routine clinical use. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of our system using the above benchmark tests. The benchmark procedures are comprised of three parts. a) speed of photon beams dose calculation inside a given phantom of 30.5 cm$\times$39.5 cm $\times$ 30 cm deep and filled with 5 ㎣ voxels within 2% statistical uncertainty. b) speed of electron beams dose calculation inside the same phantom as that of the photon beams. c) accuracy of photon and electron beam calculation inside heterogeneous slab phantom compared with the reference results of EGS4/PRESTA calculation. As results of the speed benchmark tests, it took 5.5 minutes to achieve less than 2% statistical uncertainty for 18 MV photon beams. Though the net calculation for electron beams was an order of faster than the photon beam, the overall calculation time was similar to that of photon beam case due to the overhead time to maintain parallel processing. Since our Monte Carlo code is EGSnrc, which is an improved version of EGS4, the accuracy tests of our system showed, as expected, very good agreement with the reference data. In conclusion, our Monte Carlo treatment planning system shows clinically meaningful results. Though other more efficient codes are developed such like MCDOSE and VMC＋＋, BEAMnrc based on EGSnrc code system may be used for routine clinical Monte Carlo treatment planning in conjunction with clustering technique.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.79-84
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• 2011

In this study, Geant4 based Monte Carlo simulations were carried out for medical linear accelerator. Modified Medical Linac2 toolkit was used for calculation. The energy spectrum, most probable energy and the photon mean energy compared with the published results using the EGS4 code. The results well agreed with published results. The calculated results of photon fluence, energy fluence and mean energy according to the radius from the centre of the beam were analyzed. Monte Carlo simulation using Medical Linac2 code is considered to be useful for analysis of medical linear accelerator. Because the calculated results varies depending on Physics List model for same head structure. It it important to choose the right model for research purpose. Monte Carlo simulation using GEANT4 Medical Linac2 is a valuable for any novice to adopt this code to the study related to 6 MV photon fluence from medical linear accelerator.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.138-147
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• 2005

The Monte Carlo method cannot have been used for routine treatment planning because of heavy time consumption for the acceptable accuracy. Since calculation time is proportional to particle histories, we can save time by decreasing the number of histories. However, a small number of histories can cause serious uncertainties. In this study, we proposed Monte Carlo dose computation time and uncertainty reduction method using specially designed filters and adaptive denoising process. Proposed algorithm was applied to 6 MV photon and 21 MeV electron dose calculations in homogeneous and heterogeneous phantoms. Filtering time was negligible comparing to Monte Carlo simulation time. The accuracy was improved dramatically in all situations and the simulation of 1 $\%$ to 10$\%$ number of histories of benchmark in photon and electron dose calculation showed the most beneficial result. The empirical reduction of necessary histories was about a factor of ten to fifty from the result.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.77-83
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• 2020

This study investigated the radiation protection of therapeutic radiologists. Based on the change in X-ray energy and MU value, the space dose rate in the treatment room after the irradiation was measured. 6MV, 10MV and 15MV photon beams were exposed to radiation inside the treatment room based on 300MU, 600MU and 1000MU using a linear accelerator. And repeated 10 times under the same conditions. As a result of the experiment, 0.1555 μSv/h for 6MV 300MU, 0.157 μSv /h for 300sec, 0.152 μSv/h, 0.156 μSv/h for 600MU, and 0.157 μSv/h 0.152 μSv/h for 1000MU. 300MU of 10MV was 0.49 μSv/h, 0.309 μSv/h, and 0.69 μSv/h, 0.416 μSv/h for 600MU, respectively, and 1000MU was 0.977 μSv/h and 0.478 μSv/h, respectively. The 300MU of 15MV was 3.02 μSv/h, 1.2 μSv/h, 5.459 μSv/h at 600MU, 7.34 μSv/h at 1.836 μSv/h 1000MU, and 2.709 μSv/h. The average spatial dose rate of 6MV was not significantly different from the natural spatial dose rate in the treatment room. High spatial dose rates were measured at 10 MV and 15 MV and were attenuated over time. Therefore, entering the treatment room after a certain period of time (more than 60 seconds) is considered to be effective to prevent the exposure dose of radiation workers.