The short range of low energy electrons from 2 to 9 MeV has made them useful for the treatment of superficial lesions covering large areas of the body, such as mycosis fungoides and other cutaneous lymphomas. At these electron energies, the beam penetration falls off rapidly beyond a shallow depth. Thus superficial lesions can be treated up to few millimeters without exceeding the tolerance of the bone marrow. The purpose of this project was to study the effect of the beam modifiers on the characteristics of the Varian 2100C 6 MeV beam using high dose rate total skin electron mode (HDTSe). The technique developed in the study was a modified Stanford Technique. In this technique, the patient is treated with dual six fields using + 17.5o angle above and below the horizontal line at 350 cm SSD. The patient is rotated every 60o intervals so that the whole skin surface is covered with the beam. The scattering filter used in the study was two strips of non-exposed developed radiographic films. The filter was mounted on the HDTSe applicator. The dose uniformity within a rectangle of 160 cm x 60 cm was found to be + 3% along the vertical direction and + 4% along the horizontal direction which meets the beam requirements recommended by the AAPM report (23) [61]. The use of the scattering filter has improved the dose uniformity, but it increased the x-ray contamination beyond the 30 mm depth to about 1.5% which makes the technique
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/210353 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Al-Khatib, Zaid, n/a |
| Publisher | RMIT University. Applied Science |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.rmit.edu.au/help/disclaimer, Copyright Zaid Al-Khatib |
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