Commissioning of mini-multi-leaf-collimator (MMLC) for stereotactic radiosurgery and radiotherapy

Commissioning of a Radionics miniature multi-leaf collimator (MMLC) for stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and stereotactic radiotherapy (SRT) is reported. With single isocenter and multi static fields, the MMLC can provide better conformity of dose distributions to the target and/or irregularly shaped target volumes than standard arc (circular) field beams with multiple isocenters. Advantages offered by the MMLC over traditional LINAC based SRS and SRT includes greatly improved dose homogeneity to the target, reduced patient positioning time and reduced treatment time. In this work, the MMLC is attached to a Varian 2300 C/D with Varian 80-leaf multi-leaf collimator. The MMLC has 62 leaves, each measured to a width of 3.53 mm at isocenter, with fields range from 1x1 cm to less than 10 × 12 cm. Beam parameters required by the Radionics treatment planning system (XPlan version 2) for evaluating the dose include tissue maximum ratio (TMR), scatter factors (SF), off-axis ratios (OAR), output factors, penumbra function (P) and transmission factors (TF) are performed in this work. Beam data are acquired with a small stereotactic diode, standard ion chambers and radiographic films. Measured profiles of dose distribution are compared to those calculated by the software and absolute dosimetry is performed.