Exploitation of secondary standard for calibration in units of Dw,1 cm and assessment of several HDR brachytherapy planning systems*

A secondary standard of the BEV, calibrated at the PTB in terms of Dw,1 cm, was used for calibration of the well-type chamber-based measuring systems used in clinics. In addition to the calibration, we tried to employ it for assessment of treatment planning systems (TPS) used for each particular afterloader. The dose to water at 1 cm distance from the source position was calculated by the TPS, using reference data from the source producer certificate. The values were compared directly with the dose measured at the same distance from the source.The comparison has been carried out for GammaMed Plus and MicroSelectron HDR sources. Differences of secondary standard measurements and TPS calculations were lower than ±5%, which is below the achievable uncertainty of both dose measurement and dose determination by the TPS. Nevertheless, it is higher than generally accepted in the case of external beam radiotherapy. Additional direct measurements in terms of Dw,1 cm may improve the safety and reliability of patient treatment.