Implementation of image-guided brachytherapy (IGBT) for patients with uterine cervix cancer: a tumor volume kinetics approach.

Purpose: To evaluate tumor shrinking kinetics in order to implement image-guided brachytherapy (IGBT) for the treatment of patients with cervix cancer.

Material And Methods: This study has prospectively evaluated tumor shrinking kinetics of thirteen patients with uterine cervix cancer treated with combined chemoradiation. Four high dose rate brachytherapy fractions were delivered during the course of pelvic external beam radiation therapy (EBRT).

HDR 192Ir source speed measurements using a high speed video camera.

Purpose: The dose delivered with a HDR (192)Ir afterloader can be separated into a dwell component, and a transit component resulting from the source movement. The transit component is directly dependent on the source speed profile and it is the goal of this study to measure accurate source speed profiles.

Methods: A high speed video camera was used to record the movement of a (192)Ir source (Nucletron, an Elekta company, Stockholm, Sweden) for interdwell distances of 0.

A medical image-based graphical platform -- features, applications and relevance for brachytherapy.

Purpose: Brachytherapy dose calculation is commonly performed using the Task Group-No 43 Report-Updated protocol (TG-43U1) formalism. Recently, a more accurate approach has been proposed that can handle tissue composition, tissue density, body shape, applicator geometry, and dose reporting either in media or water. Some model-based dose calculation algorithms are based on Monte Carlo (MC) simulations.