Solution of an integral equation encountered in rotation therapy

Abstract

An integral equation relating the lateral absorbed dose profile of a photon beam to the resultant absorbed dose distribution during single-turn rotating-beam therapy has been set up and solved for the case of a cylindrical phantom with the axis of rotation coinciding with the axis of symmetry of the cylinder. In the first approximation the results obtained are also valid when the axis of rotation is somewhat off-centred, even in a phantom that deviates from circular symmetry, provided the rotation is performed in both clockwise and counter clockwise directions. The calculated dose profiles indicate that improved dose uniformity can be achieved using a new type of non-linear wedge-shaped filter, which can easily be designed using the derived general analytic solution to the integral equation.