Strengthening education and training programmes for medical physics in Asia and the Pacific: the IAEA non-agreement technical cooperation (TC) regional RAS6088 project.

This article documents the work conducted in implementing the IAEA non-agreement TC regional RAS6088 project "Strengthening Education and Training Programmes for Medical Physics". Necessary information on the project was collected from the project counterparts via emails for a period of one month, starting from 21st September 2023, and verified at the Final Regional Coordination Meeting in Bangkok, Thailand from 30th October 2023 to 3rd November 2023. Sixty-three participants were trained in 5 Regional Training Courses (RTCs), with 48%, 32% and 20% in radiation therapy, diagnostic radiology, and nuclear medicine, respectively.

Dosimetric properties of thermoluminescent NaCl pellets from Khewra Salt Mines, Pakistan.

Thermoluminescence (TL) and extended dosimetric characteristics of naturally occurring sodium chloride (NaCl) salt were studied. Pellets were prepared from mined crystalline salt obtained from Khewra Salt Mines, Pakistan and irradiated from 1 mGy to 10,000 mGy using cobalt-60 gamma source. The TL response showed two dominant peaks around 125°C and 230°C, respectively, at low doses, with an additional peak in between at doses beyond 300 mGy.

Monte Carlo commissioning of radiotherapy LINAC-Introducing an improved methodology.

Purpose: Monte Carlo (MC) commissioning of medical linear accelerator (LINAC) is a time-consuming process involving a comparison between measured and simulated cross beam/lateral profiles and percentage depth doses (PDDs) for various field sizes. An agreement between these two data sets is sought by trial and error method while varying the incident electron beam parameters, such as electron beam energy or width, etc. This study aims to improve the efficiency of MC commissioning of a LINAC by assessing the feasibility of using a limited number of simulated PDDs.

Translating bed total body irradiation lung shielding and dose optimization using asymmetric MLC apertures.

A revised translating bed total body irradiation (TBI) technique is developed for shielding organs at risk (lungs) to tolerance dose limits, and optimizing dose distribution in three dimensions (3D) using an asymmetrically-adjusted, dynamic multileaf collimator. We present a dosimetric comparison of this technique with a previously developed symmetric MLC-based TBI technique. An anthropomor-phic RANDO phantom is CT scanned with 3 mm slice thickness.

Soft tissue and water substitutes for megavoltage photon beams: An EGSnrc-based evaluation.

In this work, soft-tissue equivalence of water, polystyrene, PMMA and water equivalence of polystyrene, and PMMA has been assessed for multiple megavoltage photon beams and field sizes. EGSnrc based Monte Carlo (MC) codes, BEAMnrc and DOSXYZnrc are used for the linac head modeling and the phantom dose calculations, respectively. Percentage depth doses (PDDs) are scored for two field sizes (5 × 5 cm2, 10 × 10 cm2) and photon energies (6 MV and 10 MV) in water, polystyrene, PMMA, and soft tissue.

Assessment of dose error due to nylon mesh of treatment couch.

Purpose: This study aims at the assessment of dose error in patients undergoing radiotherapy due to treatment couch of Co-60 teletherapy unit.

Materials And Methods: In this study beam attenuation due to treatment couch of Co-60 unit was measured in air for different gantry angles and field sizes. Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) phantom was used to estimate the effect of depth on attenuation.

A feasibility study of multislice X-ray CT imaging of gel dosimeters using the "zero scan" method.

This study extends the 'zero scan' method for CT imaging of polymer gel dosimeters to include multislice acquisitions. Multislice CT images consisting of 24 slices of 1.2 mm thickness were acquired of an irradiated polymer gel dosimeter and processed with the zero scan technique.