Comparison of experimental 3D dose curves in a heterogeneous phantom with results obtained by MCNP5 simulation and those extracted from a commercial treatment planning system.

Commercial planning systems used in radiotherapy treatments use determinist correlations to evaluate dose distribution around regions of interest. Estimated dose with this type of planners can be problematic, especially when analyzing heterogeneous zones. The present work is focused in quantifying the dose distribution in a heterogeneous medium irradiated by a 6 MeV photon beam emitted by an Elekta Precise Radiotherapy Unit head. Dose mapping inside the heterogeneous water phantom has been simulated with the photon and electron transport with Monte Carlo computer code MCNP5 and also, using a commercial treatment planning software in the same irradiation conditions. The calculated results were compared with experimental relative dose curves. This comparison shows that inside the heterogeneity region, the commercial algorithms are not able to predict the variation of dose in the heterogeneous zones with the same precision as MCNP5. Crown Copyright 2009. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.