Item Details

abstract

The Gamma Knife Perfexion is a radiosurgical treatment device used to irradiate targets in the head. It uses 192 high-activity Cobalt-60 sources collimated to a common focus to impart radiological damage to the target structure while minimizing dose to adjacent healthy tissue. Tungsten collimators are organized into eight sectors of 24 sources each; each sector can be set to one of three collimation sizes. The collimators can produce nominal spheres of dose 16 mm, 8 mm, or 4 mm in diameter at the focus. Planning for Gamma Knife stereotactic radiosurgery (GK SRS) is performed using images from computed tomography (CT) and/or magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, as well as manual skull measurements. The manufacturer's software used to plan the delivery of these treatments uses a simplistic set of assumptions that do not consider heterogeneous tissue structures.

subject

dose distribution

independent check

Maximum Allowed Dose Difference

radiosurgery

stereotactic

verification

contributor

Best, Ryan C. M. (author)

Bourland, J. Daniel (committee chair)

Hinson, William H (committee member)

Holzwarth, George (committee member)

Salsbury, Jr., Fred R (committee member)

Munley, Michael T (committee member)

date

2012-09-05T08:35:21Z (accessioned)

2013-03-05T09:30:05Z (available)

2012 (issued)

degree

Physics (discipline)

embargo

2013-03-05 (terms)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/37443 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

title

A Complete Dosimetric Model of the Gamma Knife Perfexion Using Penelope Monte Carlo Codes

type

Dissertation