Absorbed dose uncertainty estimation for proton therapy

Abstract

Successful radiotherapy treatment depends on the absorbed dose evaluation and the possibility to define metrological characteristics of the therapy beam. Radiotherapy requires tumor dose delivery with expanded uncertainty less than ?5 %. It is particularly important to reduce uncertainty during therapy beam calibration as well as to apply all necessary ionization chamber correction factors. Absorbed dose to water was determined using ionometric method. Calibration was performed in reference cobalt beam. Combined standard uncertainty of the calculated absorbed dose to water in 65 MeV proton beam was ?1.97% while the obtained expanded uncertainty of absorbed dose for the same beam quality was ?5.02%. The uncertainty estimation method has been developed within the project TESLA.