IMRT treatment Monitor Unit verification using absolute calibrated BEAMnrc and Geant4 Monte Carlo simulations

Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) treatments are some of the most complex being delivered by modern megavoltage radiotherapy accelerators. Therefore verification of the dose, or the presecribed Monitor Units (MU), predicted by the planning system is a key element to ensuring that patients should receive an accurate radiation dose plan during IMRT. One inherently accurate method is by comparison with absolute calibrated Monte Carlo simulations of the IMRT delivery by the linac head and corresponding delivery of the plan to a patient based phantom. In this work this approach has been taken using BEAMnrc for simulation of the treatment head, and both DOSXYZnrc and Geant4 for the phantom dose calculation. The two Monte Carlo codes agreed to within 1% of each other, and these matched very well to our planning system for IMRT plans to the brain, nasopharynx, and head and neck. Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.