%0 Journal Article %T Effects of Beam Startup Characteristics on Dose Delivery Accuracy at Low Monitor Units in Step-and-Shoot Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy %A Kazunori Fujimoto %A Kunihiko Tateoka %A Yuji Yaegashi %A Katsumi Shima %A Junji Suzuki %A Yuichi Saito %A Akihiro Nakata %A Takuya Nakazawa %A Tadanori Abe %A Masaki Yano %A Masanori Someya %A Kensei Nakata %A Masakazu Hori %A Masato Hareyama %A Koichi Sakata %J International Journal of Medical Physics,Clinical Engineering and Radiation Oncology %P 1-5 %@ 2168-5444 %D 2013 %I Scientific Research Publishing %R 10.4236/ijmpcero.2013.21001 %X

Intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) is a highly accurate technique that is usually implemented in either dynamic or step-and-shoot fashion with many segments each having low monitor units (MUs). The present study evaluated the effects of beam startup characteristics on the dose delivery accuracy for each segment at low MUs for step-and-shoot IMRT with an Elekta Precise accelerator at the highest dose rates. We used a two-dimensional semi-conductor detector for the dose measurements. The field size of each segment was assumed to be 20 กม20 cm2 and each segment was set to deliver 1 - 10 MUs. Our results show a variation in dose delivery accuracy between segments for the same IMRT beam, which can be attributed to the beam startup characteristics. This variability is attributed to the changes in the transient changes in the temperatures of the electron gun filament and the magnetron. That is, the transient increase in the temperature of the filament leads to increasing doses with time and that of the magnetron leads to decreasing doses with time during the first few MUs.

%K Startup Performance %K Step-and-Shoot IMRT %K Low Monitor Units %U http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=28043