Date of Award

4-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Physics

First Advisor

Dr. Bashar lssa

Second Advisor

Dr. Adel Hashish

Third Advisor

Dr. Walid A. Metwally

Abstract

The aim of radiotherapy treatment is to deliver a specified radiation dose throughout a definite target volume within predetermined levels of accuracy and homogeneity; at the same time ensuring adequate dose sparing of surrounding normal tissue. Radiotherapy is a complex process involving a number of steps and the accuracy of each stage has a direct impact on the treatment outcome. At each stage, comprehensive quality assurance procedures are required to ensure safe and accurate delivery of the prescribed dose.

This project will aim to determine the currently achievable accuracy and reproducibility of radiotherapy dosimetry and assess the current recommendations for quality assurance tolerances. Alongside, it will examine the traceability of different codes of practice in measuring absorbed dose results from high energy photon and electron beams.

The study will present a theoretical and a practical comparison between different codes of practice: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA TRS-398), American Association of Physics in Medicine, (AAPM TG-51), Institute of Physical Engineering in Medicine (IPEM-2003) for electron beams, and Institute of Physical Science in Medicine (IPSM-1990) for photon beams.

Our study confirms that our results are within the ± 5 % internationally suggested accuracy and provides detailed comparison between the mentioned protocols. We measured the data and analyzed them in detail and presented them with the reference conditions to determine the absorbed dose to water for high energy photon and electron beams with the chosen protocols. Our obtained results are consistent with the reference beam data from Varian Medical Systems. This enhances the confidence on Tawam hospital’s Quality Assurance on the Linear Accelerators.

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