AbstractID: 7605 Title: Dose verification in HDR brachytherapy using a
dedicated computer code
The importance of independently verifying the dosimetry of high dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy treatments has been
recognized in various works, and is a requirement of the United States National Regulatory Commission (NRC). Previously published
techniques are either limited to particular treatment techniques, or are exceedingly time-consuming to be practical for treatments with
a large number of applicators such as prostate HDR. In this work we describe an in-house code used for the sole purpose of verifying
HDR dosimetry. The code imports the positions of applicators and the optimized dwell times along these catheters, and calculates the
dose at any desired point. The time required for verification is less than one minute, regardless of the number of applicators. This
verification method adds negligible additional waiting time for the patient while satisfying the requirements of the NRC. We validate
the code for various arbitrary cases ranging from a single catheter to complex multi-catheter plans, and show clinical results for three
vaginal cylinder cases, one endometrial case, and one nine-catheter interstitial implant. For the cases studied, 75% of dose points fall
within 1%, and all dose points fall within 4%, of the planned dose.