High-resolution gel dosimetry of a HDR brachytherapy source using normoxic polymer gel dosimeters: Preliminary study

Polymer gel dosimetry has been shown to be an effective tool in the analysis of radiotherapy treatments in cancer therapy, being used to map the dose distribution around an irradiation pattern of a polymer gel dosimeter. Combined with high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), polymer gel dosimetry can be an effective dosimetry tool to map dose distributions with high spatial resolution (∼100 μm). Previously polyacrylamide polymer gel dosimetry required a strict hypoxic environment to protect the gel from oxygen infiltration as oxygen inhibits the polymerization reaction used to correlate to absorbed dose. However, with the advent of normoxic polymer gels, a strict hypoxic environment is not required. Normoxic polymer gel dosimeters can be manufactured under normal atmospheric conditions. This study assessed the use of a MAGIC normoxic polymer gel dosimeter to accurately map the dose distribution of a single-line irradiation and a point source irradiation from a brachytherapy radiation source administered through a nylon catheter inserted into the gel dosimeter. The phantoms were irradiated to a dose of 10 Gy at 2 mm from the source center and imaged using high-resolution MRI with an in-plane pixel size of 0.1055 mm/pixel. Good agreement was found between the dose points predicted by the computer treatment-planning system and the measured normalized dose profiles in the gel dosimeter. The use of normoxic polymer gel dosimeters with high-resolution MRI evaluation shows promise as an effective tool in applications requiring accurate dose distributions in high resolution, such as intravascular brachytherapy.