Radiation dosimetry effect evaluation of a carbon fiber couch on novel uRT-linac 506c accelerator

Abstract Recently, a diagnostic helical CT is integrated into a linear accelerator, called uRT-linac 506c, whose CT scanning dataset can be directly used to do simulation. This novel structure provides a possibility for online adaptive radiotherapy. For adaptive radiotherapy, the carbon fiber couch is an essential external device for supporting and positioning patients. And the effect on dose attenuation and distribution caused by a couch is inevitable and vital for precise treatment. In this research, the couch equipped with uRT-linac 506c was evaluated on the radiation dosimetry effect. The treatment couch equipped on the uRT-linac 506c accelerator was evaluated, and its effect on the attenuation, surface dose and dose buildup were measured for different phantom positions (offset = 0 cm, offset = + 10 cm and offset = − 10 cm, respectively) and different gantry angles. Since uRT-linac 506c is exclusively capable to provide diagnostic CT scanning data with real relative electron density (RED), this CT scanning data of the couch can be used directly in uRT-TPS to design plans. This scanned couch dataset was designated as the model A. The model B was a dummy structure of a treatment couch inserted with artificially preset RED. The dose calculation accuracy of these two models was compared using PB, CC, and MC on uRT-TPS. With the effect of carbon fiber couch, the surface dose was increased at least 97.94% for 25 × 25 cm2 field and 188.83% for 10 × 10 cm2 field, compared with those without. At different phantom positions (offset = 0, + 10, − 10 cm), the attenuation for 6 MV photon beam at gantry angle 180° were 4.4%, 4.4%, and 4.3%, respectively, and varied with changes of gantry angle. There do exists dose deviation between measurement and TPS calculation with the involvement of treatment couch, among the three algorithms, MC presented the least deviation, and the model A made less and steadier deviation than the model B, showing promising superiority. The attenuation, surface dose, and buildup effects of the carbon fiber couch in this study were measured similarly to most counterparts. The dose deviation calculated based on the couch dataset scanned by the diagnostic helical CT was smaller than those based on a dummy couch. This result suggests that an accelerator equipped with a diagnostic CT, which can help reduce the dose deviation of the carbon fiber couch, is a promising platform for online adaptive radiotherapy.