Phantom dosimetry for conformal stereotactic radiotherapy with a head and neck localizer frame

Linear accelerator based stereotactic radiotherapy (SRT) with the Gill-Thomas-Cosman (GTC) re-locatable frame has been in use for several years. The use of the frame is limited to treating lesions above the hard palate. For treating tumours in the head and neck region, the Head and Neck Localizer (HNL) frame has been designed by Radionics Inc. for use with their XPlan treatment planning software. In this study we have used a spherical acrylic phantom commercially known as the 'Lucy' phantom (Sandstrom Sandstrom Trade and Technology Inc.) to perform thermoluminiscent as well as film dosimetry for the HNL frame. A radio-opaque marker was placed in the phantom and a film test carried out to verify the accuracy in isocentre positioning. The results of the dosimetry with TLD were within 2% for points near the isocentre and 5% (or 2 mm in steep gradients) in the planning target volume (PTV). In regions of low dose, larger percentage differences in local dose were observed, but all differences were within 5% of isocentre dose. The film dosimetry provided dose distributions that matched well with those generated by the XPlan stereotactic treatment planning software.