Purpose: To develop a simulation model for GammaMed Plus high dose rate 192 Ir brachytherapy source in TOPAS Monte Carlo software and validate it by calculating the TG-43 dosimetry parameters and comparing them with published data.
Methods: We built a model for GammaMed Plus high dose rate brachytherapy source in TOPAS. The TG-43 dosimetry parameters including air-kerma strength SK , dose-rate constant Λ, radial dose function gL (r), and 2D anisotropy function F(r,θ) were calculated using Monte Carlo simulation with Geant4 physics models and NNDC 192 Ir spectrum. Calculations using an old 192 Ir spectrum were also carried out to evaluate the impact of incident spectrum and cross sections. The results were compared with published data.
Results: For calculations using the NNDC spectrum, the air-kerma strength per unit source activity SK /A and Λ were 1.0139 × 10-7 U/Bq and 1.1101 cGy.h-1 .U-1 , which were 3.56% higher and 0.62% lower than the reference values, respectively. The gL (r) agreed with reference values within 1% for radial distances from 2 mm to 20 cm. For radial distances of 1, 3, 5, and 10 cm, the agreements between F(r,θ) from this work and the reference data were within 1.5% for 15° < θ < 165°, and within 4% for all θ values. The discrepancies were attributed to the updated source spectrum and cross sections. They caused deviations of the SK /A of 2.90% and 0.64%, respectively. As for gL (r), they caused average deviations of -0.22% and 0.48%, respectively. Their impact on F(r,θ) was not quantified for the relatively high statistical uncertainties, but basically they did not result in significant discrepancies.
Conclusion: A model for GammaMed Plus high dose rate 192 Ir brachytherapy source was developed in TOPAS and validated following TG-43 protocols, which can be used for future studies. The impact of updated incident spectrum and cross sections on the dosimetry parameters was quantified.
© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Association of Physicists in Medicine.