Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Radiol. Mar 28, 2017; 9(3): 112-125
Published online Mar 28, 2017. doi: 10.4329/wjr.v9.i3.112
Three-dimensional radiation dosimetry using polymer gel and solid radiochromic polymer: From basics to clinical applications
Yoichi Watanabe, Leighton Warmington, N Gopishankar
Yoichi Watanabe, Leighton Warmington, Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
N Gopishankar, All India Institutes of Medical Sciences, Delhi 110029, India
Author contributions: Watanabe Y wrote the article; Warmington L provided the data and reviewed the manuscript; Gopishankar N reviewed the manuscript and made suggestions for improvement.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Yoichi Watanabe, PhD, Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Minnesota, 420 Delaware St. SE, MMC494, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States. watan016@umn.edu
Telephone: +1-612-6266708 Fax: +1-612-6267060
Received: October 10, 2016
Peer-review started: October 13, 2016
First decision: November 30, 2016
Revised: December 31, 2016
Accepted: January 16, 2017
Article in press: January 18, 2017
Published online: March 28, 2017
Abstract

Accurate dose measurement tools are needed to evaluate the radiation dose delivered to patients by using modern and sophisticated radiation therapy techniques. However, the adequate tools which enable us to directly measure the dose distributions in three-dimensional (3D) space are not commonly available. One such 3D dose measurement device is the polymer-based dosimeter, which changes the material property in response to radiation. These are available in the gel form as polymer gel dosimeter (PGD) and ferrous gel dosimeter (FGD) and in the solid form as solid plastic dosimeter (SPD). Those are made of a continuous uniform medium which polymerizes upon irradiation. Hence, the intrinsic spatial resolution of those dosimeters is very high, and it is only limited by the method by which one converts the dose information recorded by the medium to the absorbed dose. The current standard methods of the dose quantification are magnetic resonance imaging, optical computed tomography, and X-ray computed tomography. In particular, magnetic resonance imaging is well established as a method for obtaining clinically relevant dosimetric data by PGD and FGD. Despite the likely possibility of doing 3D dosimetry by PGD, FGD or SPD, the tools are still lacking wider usages for clinical applications. In this review article, we summarize the current status of PGD, FGD, and SPD and discuss the issue faced by these for wider acceptance in radiation oncology clinic and propose some directions for future development.

Keywords: Optical computed tomography, Three-dimensional dose measurement, Solid radiochromic polymer, Magnetic resonance imaging, Polymer gel

Core tip: Polymer gel and solid radiochromic polymer dosimeters are promising tools for measuring the radiation dose distributions in three-dimensional space. The techniques have been studied for last 20 years, but are not used for routine clinical applications to improve the radiation delivery quality. In this review, we summarize the current status and discuss the necessary development to make these tools more accessible for wider usages.