Abstract
Deterministic linear Boltzmann transport equation (D-LBTE) solvers have recently been developed, and one of the latest available software codes, Acuros XB, has been implemented in a commercial treatment planning system for radiotherapy photon beam dose calculation. One of the major limitations of most commercially available model-based algorithms for photon dose calculation is the ability to account for the effect of electron transport. This induces some errors in patient dose calculations, especially near heterogeneous interfaces between low and high density media such as tissue/lung interfaces. D-LBTE solvers have a high potential of producing accurate dose distributions in and near heterogeneous media in the human body. Extensive previous investigations have proved that D-LBTE solvers were able to produce comparable dose calculation accuracy as Monte Carlo methods with a reasonable speed good enough for clinical use. The current paper reviews the dosimetric evaluations of D-LBTE solvers for external beam photon radiotherapy. This content summarizes and discusses dosimetric validations for D-LBTE solvers in both homogeneous and heterogeneous media under different circumstances and also the clinical impact on various diseases due to the conversion of dose calculation from a conventional convolution/superposition algorithm to a recently released D-LBTE solver.
Highlights
Conformal photon dose distributions in various treatment sites can be achieved using different techniques of multileaf collimator-based intensity modulated radiotherapy, including static intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) and volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT)
Correction-based algorithms implemented in commercially available clinical treatment planning system include the pencil beam algorithm (PBC), collapsed cone convolution algorithm (CCC), and the analytical anisotropic algorithm (AAA)
For gamma analysis with film, 98.2% passed the 3%/3 mm criterion for 6 MV and 99.5% for 15 MV. Those supporting the use of Dw argued that (1) therapeutic and normal tissue tolerance doses determined from clinical trials were based on Dw as photon dose measurements and calculations were historically reported in terms of Dw, (2) calibration of treatment machines were performed according to recognized dosimetry protocols in terms of the absorbed dose to water, and (3) tumor cells embedded within any medium such as bone were more water-like than mediumlike
Summary
Conformal photon dose distributions in various treatment sites can be achieved using different techniques of multileaf collimator-based intensity modulated radiotherapy, including static intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) and volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT). To account for the presence of inhomogeneities, simple density scaling of the kernels is applied so that the secondary electron transport is only modeled macroscopically Both AAA and CCC were proved to produce inaccurate dose distribution in media with complex heterogeneities in certain circumstances [14,15,16,17,18]. The desire to develop a fast alternative dose calculation method with comparable accuracy to MC methods has led to the exploration of deterministic solutions to the coupled system of linear Boltzmann transport equations (LBTE) [21,22,23,24,25,26] It was first demonstrated using the prototype software, Attila, which was a general purpose grid-based Boltzmann solver code. This paper summarizes and discusses the findings of the most recent dosimetric evaluation for D-LBTE solvers in various treatment sites
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