Point absorbed dose verification for volumetric modulated arc therapy plans. A comparative study between ionization microchamber and chamber array

Abstract

According to the international recommendations a quality control must be made for IMRT treatments before these can be delivered. These recommendations are applied to volumetric modulated arc therapy treatments in our Department. As a part of the verifications chain, measurements of absorbed dose in a phantom point and in the phantom volume are made for a specific patient with ionization chamber and ionization chambers array, respectively.

The aim of this issue is to compare measurements of absorbed dose between these two kinds of detectors. The predictions of absorbed dose from Treatment Planning System are taken as the reference one. The differences among these measurements and the reference are calculated for 105 specific patients.

A statistical analysis shows that the measurements of absorbed dose with chamber and array are strongly correlated. This result allows us to eliminate from our verifications chain the measurements of absorbed dose in a phantom point with ionization chamber because these ones are included in measurements of absorbed dose in the volume with a very small statistic risk. As a result, much time can be saved in the verifications process without any lack of quality.