Calculation of Dose in Healthy Organs, during Radiotherapy 4-Field Box 3D Conformal for Prostate Cancer, Simulation of the Linac 2300, Radiotherapy Room and MAX

Copyright © 2013 Jardel L. Thalhofer et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Li-cense, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In men, prostate cancer is one of the most frequent types, and radiotherapy is adopted as a form of treatment. Although there are efforts to minimize the dose in the healthy organ and tissues adjacent to the tumor during radiotherapy, these organs are affected by the secondary scattered and leakage radiation originating from the therapeutic beam and these doses deposited in the healthy organs, can induce the appearance of new focal points of cancer. The aim of this study is to calculate the equivalent and effective doses, due to photons and neutrons, in healthy organs of a patient submitted to radiotherapy treatment for prostate cancer. Computed simulation of radiotherapy treatment for prostate cancer was used to perform the dose calculations, adopting the treatment protocol used at INCA (Brazilian National Cancer Institute). The MCNPX code was employed in the simulation radiation transport while the male voxel MAX phantom was used to represent the patient's human anatomy. The results obtained in this study indicate that the organs close to the irradiate