Ion chambers compliance results of Brazilian radiation therapy facilities

Abstract

The Brazilian Nuclear Energy Commission (cnen) has been making a constant effort to keep up to date with international standards and national needs to strengthen the status of radiological protection of the country. The guidelines related to radiation therapy facilities have been revised in the last five years in order to take into consideration the most relevant aspects of the growing technology as well as to mitigate the accidents or incidents observed in practice. Hence, clinical dosimeters have gained special importance in this matter. In the present work, we discuss the effectiveness of regulation and inspections to the enforcement of instrument calibration accuracy for the improvement of patient dosimetry and quality control. As a result, we observed that the number of calibrated instruments, mainly well chambers, is increasing each year. The same behavior is observed for instruments employed in technologically advanced radiation treatments such as intensity modulated radiotherapy, volumetric therapy and stereotatic radiosurgery. We ascribe this behavior to the new regulation.

Upper bound dose values for meson radiation in heavy-ion therapy

“…It is relevant to explore the importance of nuclear interactions of heavy particles in tissue for the radiological protection of patients and workers [9][10][11][12][13]. There are only a few works dedicated to this issue in the literature and one attempt in this direction is the work of Yonai and Spano who tried to determine the dose delivered to personnel during treatments with heavy-ion beams [14].…”