Effects of Beam Startup Characteristics on Dose Delivery Accuracy at Low Monitor Units in Step-and-Shoot Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy.docVIP

International Journal of Medical Physics, Clinical Engineering and Radiation Oncology, 2013, 2, 1-5 Published Online February 2013 (/journal/ijmpcero) /10.4236/ijmpcero.2013.21001 Effects of Beam Startup Characteristics on Dose Delivery Accuracy at Low Monitor Units in Step-and-Shoot Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy Kazunori Fujimoto , Kunihiko Tateoka , Yuji Yaegashi , Katsumi Shima , Junji Suzuki , 1,2 1,3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Yuichi Saito , Akihiro Nakata , Takuya Nakazawa , Tadanori Abe , Masaki Yano , 1 3 3 3 2 1,3 Masanori Someya , Kensei Nakata , Masakazu Hori , Masato Hareyama , Koichi Sakata 1 Department of Medical Physics, Graduate School of Medicine, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan Radiation Therapy Research Institute, Social Medical Corporation Teishinkai, Sapporo, Japan 2 3 Department of Radiology, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan Email: tateoka@sapmed.ac.jp Received September 11, 2012; revised October 15, 2012; accepted October 23, 2012 ABSTRACT Intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) is a highly accurate technique that is usually implemented in either dy- namic or step-and-shoot fashion with many segments each having low monitor units (MUs). The present study evalu- ated the effects of beam startup characteristics on the dose delivery accuracy for each segment at low MUs for step-and-shoot IMRT with an Elekta Precise accelerator at the highest dose rates. We used a two-dimensional semi- conductor detector for the dos