Contralateral breast doses measured by film dosimetry: tangential techniques and an optimized IMRT technique

The contralateral breast (CLB) doses for three tangential techniques were characterized by using a female thorax phantom and GafChromic EBT film. Dose calculations by the pencil beam and collapsed cone algorithms were included for comparison. The film dosimetry reveals a highly inhomogeneous dose distribution within the CLB, and skin doses due to the medial fields that are several times higher than the interior dose. These phenomena are not correctly reproduced by the calculation algorithms. All tangential techniques were found to give a mean CLB dose of approximately 0.5 Gy. All wedged fields resulted in higher CLB doses than the corresponding open fields, and the lateral open fields resulted in higher CLB doses than the medial open fields. More than a twofold increase in the mean CLB dose from the medial open field was observed for a 90 degrees change of the collimator orientation. Replacing the physical wedge with a virtual wedge reduced the mean dose to the CLB by 35% and 16% for the medial and lateral fields, respectively. Lead shielding reduced the skin dose for a tangential technique by approximately 50%, but the mean CLB dose was only reduced by approximately 11%. Finally, a technique based on open medial fields in combination with several IMRT fields is proposed as a technique for minimizing the CLB dose. With and without lead shielding, the mean CLB dose using this technique was found to be 0.20 and 0.27 Gy, respectively.