COMS eye plaque brachytherapy dosimetric sensitivity to source photon energy and seed design

This study explores the influence of source photon energy on eye plaque brachytherapy dose distributions for a 16 mm COMS plaque filled with 103Pd, 125I, or 131Cs sources or monoenergetic photon emissions ranging from 12 keV to 100 keV. Dose distributions were similarly created for all permutations of three common brachytherapy seed designs. Within this range, sources with average energy ≤22 keV may reduce dose to the opposite eye wall by more than a factor of 2 while maintaining tolerable proximal sclera doses when prescribing to depths of 9 mm or less. Current commercially-available brachytherapy sources can exhibit up to 15% relative dosimetric sensitivity to seed design at regions within the eye.