Treatment planning methodology for the Miami Multichannel Applicator following the American Brachytherapy Society recently published guidelines: the Lahey Clinic experience.

The objective of this study was to develop a standardized procedure from simulation to treatment delivery for the multichannel Miami applicator, in order to increase planning consistency and reduce errors. A plan is generated prior to the 1st treatment using the CT images acquired with the applicator in place, and used for all 3 fractions. To confirm the application placement before each treatment fraction, an AP image is acquired and compared with the AP baseline image taken at simulation.

Retrospective review of Contura HDR breast cases to improve our standardized procedure.

To retrospectively review our first 20 Contura high dose rate breast cases to improve and refine our standardized procedure and checklists. We prepared in advance checklists for all steps, developed an in-house Excel spreadsheet for second checking the plan, and generated a procedure for efficient contouring and a set of optimization constraints to meet the dose volume histogram criteria. Templates were created in our treatment planning system for structures, isodose levels, optimization constraints, and plan report.

SU-E-T-138: Quantification of Dwell Position Inaccuracy in Varian GammaMed HDR Titanium Ring Applicators.

Purpose: To quantify the dwell position inaccuracy in Titanium ring applicators and develop a test to be performed quarterly, after source exchange.

Methods: All three rings from our Titanium kit (30, 45, 60 deg.) were used for this study.

Quality assurance methodology for Varian RapidArc treatment plans.

With the commercial introduction of the Varian RapidArc, a new modality for treatment planning and delivery, the need has arisen for consistent and efficient techniques for performing patient-specific quality assurance (QA) tests. In this paper we present our methodology for a RapidArc treatment plan QA procedure. For our measurements we used a 2D diode array (MapCHECK) embedded at 5 cm water equivalent depth in MapPHAN 5 phantom and an Exradin A16 ion chamber placed in six different positions in a cylindrical homogeneous phantom (QUASAR).

Code of Ethics for the American Association of Physicists in Medicine: report of Task Group 109.

A comprehensive Code of Ethics for the members of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) is presented as the report of Task Group 109 which consolidates previous AAPM ethics policies into a unified document. The membership of the AAPM is increasingly diverse. Prior existing AAPM ethics polices were applicable specifically to medical physicists, and did not encompass other types of members such as health physicists, regulators, corporate affiliates, physicians, scientists, engineers, those in training, or other health care professionals.