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

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title
A Complete Dosimetric Model of the Gamma Knife Perfexion Using Penelope Monte Carlo Codes
author
Best, Ryan C. M.
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
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
type
Dissertation

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