Characterization of a commercial EPID-based in-vivo dosimetry and its feasibility and implementation for treatment verification in Malaysia

Abstract

Introduction: In vivo dosimetry verification is currently a necessity in radiotherapy centres in Europe countries as one of the tools for patient-specific QA, and now its demand is currently rising in developed countries, such as Malaysia. The aim of this study is to characterize commercial EPID-based dosimetry and its implementation for radiotherapy treatment verification in Malaysia. Materials and Methods: In this work, the sensitivity and performance of a commercially available in vivo dosimetry system, EPIgray® (DOSIsoft, Cachan, France), were qualitatively evaluated prior to its use at our centre. EPIgray response to dose linearity, field size, off-axis, position, and angle dependency tests were performed against TPS calculated dose for 6 MV and 10 MV photon beams. Relative deviations of the total dose were evaluated at isocentre and different depths in the water. EPIgray measured dose was validated by using IMRT and VMAT prostate plan. All calculation points were at the beam isocentre and at points suggested by TG-119 with accepted tolerance of ±10% dose threshold. Results: EPIgray reported good agreement for linearity, field size, off-axis, and position dependency with TPS dose, being within 5% tolerance for both energy ranges. The average deviation was less than ±2% and ±7% in 6 MV and 10 MV photon beams, respectively, for the angle dependency test. A clinical evaluation performed for the IMRT prostate plan gave average agreement within ±3% at the plan isocentre for both energies. While for the VMAT plan, 95% and 100% of all points created lie below ±5% for 6 MV and 10 MV photon beam energy, respectively. Conclusion: In summary, based on the results of preliminary characterization, EPID-based dosimetry is believed as an important tool and beneficial to be implemented for IMRT/VMAT plans verification in Malaysia, especially for in vivo verification, alongside existing pre-treatment verification.