[Dosimetric verification of IMRT treatment plans at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)].

The present paper describes a method for the individual dosimetric verification of IMRT treatment plans. The German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum; DKFZ) has implemented the intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) since 1997. So far, 246 patients with head and neck cancer, cancer of the prostate, breast, and vertebral column, as well as mesothelioma of the pleura have been treated. Every IMRT plan is transferred into a special IMRT verification phantom, recalculated, and dosimetrically verified. Absolute dose distributions are measured with Kodak EDR films and compared with the results of the dose calculation. After correction of the optical density in relationship to the dose, EDR films are able to measure the absolute dose with an accuracy of +/- 2% compared to an ionization chamber. A visual C++ software tool has been developed to correlate and evaluate the film dose distributions with the corresponding slices of the 3D dose cube. Beside the overlay of absolute or relative isodoses and dose profiles, the median dose within correlated regions of interest (ROIs) is also included in the quantitative dose evaluation. The deviation between EDR film dosimetry and dose calculation is delta D = -0.3% +/- 2.3%. After introduction of the verification software, the total verification time (including handling, correlation, evaluation, and documentation of the data), could be reduced to less than 2 hours.