In vivo verification of treatment source dwell times in brachytherapy of postoperative endometrial carcinoma: a feasibility study

Abstract

Background: In brachytherapy, there are still many manual procedures that can cause adverse events which can be detected with in vivo dosimetry systems. Plastic scintillator dosimeters (PSD) have interesting properties to achieve this objective such as real-time reading, linearity, repeatability, and small size to fit inside brachytherapy catheters. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of a PSD in postoperative endometrial brachytherapy in terms of source dwell time accuracy. Methods: Measurements were carried out in a PMMA phantom to characterise the PSD. Patient measurements in 121 dwell positions were analysed to obtain the differences between planned and measured dwell times. Results: The repeatability test showed a relative standard deviation below 1% for the measured dwell times. The relative standard deviation of the PSD sensitivity with accumulated absorbed dose was lower than 1.2%. The equipment operated linearly in total counts with respect to absorbed dose and also in count rate versus absorbed dose rate. The mean (standard deviation) of the absolute differences between planned and measured dwell times in patient treatments was 0.0 (0.2) seconds. Conclusions: The PSD system is useful as a quality assurance tool for brachytherapy treatments.