Radiation protection regulatory differentiates between primary and scatter radiation. Whereas for conventional clinical linear accelerators the solid angle for primary radiation is planar, the Cyberknife (Accuray Inc., Sunnyvale, CA) may point its beam in all spatial directions. In order to be able to judge on radiation protection calculations for a Cyberknife-M6 vault, the direction distribution for delivered plans was evaluated based on clinical experiences.
METHODS
The log-files of 121 delivered patient treatment plans were exported, divided into cranial and extra-cranial treatments and the delivered monitor units (MU) together with the corresponding beam directions were analyzed. This MU-weighted spatial distribution was then projected to a 9.5 × 5.9 × 3.9 m(3) vault, generating an "intensity map" using a binning of 50 × 50 cm(2) . The factor of direction (FOD) is reported as a fraction of the total applied MUs to the walls, ceiling and floor in the perspective of a patient lying in head-first-supine position on the couch. In this study, the term intFOD refers to the integral FOD and maxFOD refers to the maximal FOD for a single bin.
RESULTS
For all kind of treatments and collimators, intFOD and maxFOD for the wall behind the patient's head is 0.0. The intFOD for the floor varies between 0.65 and 0.74. For the ceiling, maxFOD is 0.002 and 0.0 for cranial and extra-cranial cases, respectively. The intFOD for the wall at the patient's feet, is 0.094 for cranial and 0.005 for extra-cranial cases. There is nearly no difference between the maxFOD of the right and left wall for cranial cases, whereas for extra-cranial cases these numbers differ by a factor of 1.75.
CONCLUSION
The varying FODs for the Cyberknife were quantified based on delivered treatment plans. These findings are helpful regarding the design of Cyberknife vaults.
