Preliminary evaluation of the dosimetric accuracy of the in vivo plastic scintillation detector OARtrac system for prostate cancer treatments

Abstract

A promising, new, in vivo prostate dosimetry system has been developed for clinical radiation therapy. This work outlines the preliminary end-to-end testing of the accuracy and precision of the new OARtrac scintillation dosimetry system. We tested 94 calibrated plastic scintillation detector (PSD) probes before their final integration into endorectal balloon assemblies. These probes had been calibrated at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Dosimetry Laboratory. We used a complete clinical OARtrac system including the PSD probes, charge coupled device camera monitoring system, and the manufacturer's integrated software package. The PSD probes were irradiated at 6 MV in a Solid Water® phantom. Irradiations were performed with a 6 MV linear accelerator using anterior–posterior/posterior–anterior matched fields to a maximum dose of 200 cGy in a 100 cm source-axis distance geometry. As a whole, the OARtrac system has good accuracy with a mean error of 0.01% and an error spread of ±5.4% at the 95% confidence interval. These results reflect the PSD probes’ accuracy before their final insertion into endorectal balloons. Future work will test the dosimetric effects of mounting the PSD probes within the endorectal balloon assemblies.