Effects of target size on the comparison of photon and charged particle dose distributions

The work presented here is part of an ongoing project to quantify and evaluate the differences in the use of different radiation types and irradiation geometries in radiosurgery. We are examining dose distributions for photons using the Gamma Knife'' and the linear accelerator arc methods, as well as different species of charged particles from protons to neon ions. A number of different factors need to be studied to accurately compare the different modalities such as target size, shape and location, the irradiation geometry, and biological response. This presentation focuses on target size, which has a large effect on the dose distributions in normal tissue surrounding the lesion. This work concentrates on dose distributions found in radiosurgery, as opposed to those usually found in radiotherapy. 5 refs., 2 figs.