Studying and analyzing the impact of upgrading the Elekta Preces Linear accelerator on the percentage depth dose parameters.
Abstract
The delivery of an accurate radiation dose to the tumor site, and thus the success of radiation treatment, depends on the accuracy of measurements of the radiation parameters. Therefore, this paper aimed to study and analyze the impact of upgrading the Electa Preces linear accelerator installed at the Radiotherapy department at Tripoli University Hospital, Tripoli, Libya, from a standard head collimator to a multileaf collimator on percentage depth dose (PDD) parameters for 6 MV and 15 MV photon beam energies at various field sizes and depths. The measurements in this study were carried out using a PTW MP3-M 3D water scanning system, and the acquired data were processed using MEPHYSTO mc2 navigation software (PTW, Freiburg) version 1.6. The results of this paper showed considerable variations between the majority of parameters of PDD. The highest relative differences between the measured PDD pre- and post-upgrade were observed in the build-up region. The highest value recorded was 16.69% for 6 MV photon beam energy. Additionally, the relative deviation of surface dose reached 9.27% for photon beam energy. Therefore, recommissioning the collected data, which is used in the treatment planning system to evaluate dose distribution in patients, is needed and strongly recommended.