Validation and application of polymer gel dosimetry for the dose verification of an intensity-modulated arc therapy (IMAT) treatment.

Polymer gel dosimetry was used to assess an intensity-modulated arc therapy (IMAT) treatment for whole abdominopelvic radiotherapy. Prior to the actual dosimetry experiment, a uniformity study on an unirradiated anthropomorphic phantom was carried out. A correction was performed to minimize deviations in the R2 maps due to radiofrequency non-uniformities. In addition, compensation strategies were implemented to limit R2 deviations caused by temperature drift during scanning. Inter- and intra-slice R2 deviations in the phantom were thereby significantly reduced. This was verified in an investigative study where the same phantom was irradiated with two rectangular superimposed beams: structural deviations between gel measurements and computational results remained below 3% outside high dose gradient regions; the spatial shift in those regions was within 2.5 mm. When comparing gel measurements with computational results for the IMAT treatment, dose deviations were noted in the liver and right kidney, but the dose-volume constraints were met. Root-mean-square differences between both dose distributions were within 5% with spatial deviations not more than 2.5 mm. Dose fluctuations due to gantry angle discretization in the dose computation algorithm were particularly noticeable in the low-dose region.