The aim of this work was to investigate MR-based polymer gel dosimetry as a three-dimensional (3D) dosimetry technique in conformal radiotherapy. A cylindrical container filled with polymer gel was placed in a water-filled torso phantom to verify a treatment plan for the conformal irradiation of a mediastinal tumor located near the esophagus, Magnetic resonance spin-spin relaxation rate images were acquired and, after calibration, converted to absorbed dose distributions. The dose maps were compared with dose distributions measured using radiographic film. The average root-mean-square structural deviation, for the complete dose distribution, amounted to less than 3% between gel and film dose maps. It may be expected that MR gel dosimetry will become a valuable tool in the verification of 3D dose distributions. The influence of imaging artifacts arising from eddy currents, temperature drift during scanning, and B1 field inhomogeneity on the dose maps was taken into account and minimized. Magn Reson Med 43:116-125, 2000, (C) 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Dosimetric detectors used in high-energy photon radiation dosimetry mainly perform a zero- or one-dimensional measurement. These low-dimensional methods are not always adequate in the context of conformal radiotherapy. Therefore, two-dimensional film dosimetry has attracted attention. We studied a 12-bit CCD-based film digitizer (Vidar VXR-12) with regard to accurate film dosimetry. We investigated the stability, linearity, noise, effects of aberrant light scatter and built-in conversion tables. A digitizing resolution of 75 dpi and a digitizing speed of 20 ms/line result in an optimal signal-to-noise ratio. At optical densities above 2.0, the reading accuracy of the digitizer is limited by noise. The results of various experiments prove both the capabilities and limitations of the digitizer studied. We also propose a method to acquire and process film data using such a digitizer.