THE INCORPORATION OF SPECIFIC TISSUE NUCLIDE ATTENUATION DATA INTO THE ANDERSON METHOD FOR PRODUCING BRACHYTHERAPY VOLUME DOSE HISTOGRAMS

Anderson (see Med. Phys., vol.13, p.898-903, 1986) has proposed an analytical method for deriving volume-dose histograms relating to three-dimensional brachytherapy distributions. Because the mathematical transformation allows the otherwise dominant effects of the inverse-square fall-off about individual sources to be effectively suppressed, the resulting histograms provide the potential for visually and numerically assessing the overall quality of a brachytherapy treatment. The Anderson equations have been combined with the radial-dose polynomials of Dale, which are applicable to a number of tissue/nuclide combinations, and the predictions of the combined formalism have been used to further investigate the physical aspects of brachytherapy dosimetry. The problems associated with the dosimetry of low-energy gamma -emitters such as 125I are once again highlighted, as are the potential advantages of using a radionuclide with an intermediate gamma -ray energy.