A multiportal compensator system for IMRT delivery

We have developed a multiportal compensator system for IMRT delivery, comprising a rotational compensator mount for a linac head, cylindrical compensator enclosures positioned in the mount, a vacuum-formed thermoplastic sheet with heavy alloy granules inside the enclosure, and a vacuum thermoforming device. The mount rotates like a revolver by a stepping motor, thus allowing automatic multiportal IMRT without exchanging compensators by human operators during treatment. The thermoforming device has servo-motor-driven 10 x 10 metal rod elements to actualize an arbitrary intensity profile. The thermoplastic sheet is preheated by a built-in biplanar heater and then it is placed over the rod elements. Subsequently, vacuum forming is performed through corner cutouts of the rod elements. After forced cooling down, the heavy alloy granules are fed into the formed sheet. Preliminary experiment using solid water phantoms and an x-ray film has shown that the intensity profile on the film agrees reasonably well with the desired profile.