ABSTRACT
Brachytherapy plays an essential role for the treatment of malignant and nonmalignant disease with radiotherapy. The radiation-emitting sources used for this treatment modality are radionuclide- or electronic-based and may incorporate very low dose rates (LDR) or high dose rates (HDR). This makes accurate and precise dosimetry of such sources both challenging and unique. This chapter describes methods to measure and determine the brachytherapy source strength and associated dosimetric parameters while ensuring traceability to national dosimetry standards. The brachytherapy calibration laboratories, national standards lab involvement, and calibration techniques are also presented in detail. Clinical users should have the proper dosimeters to perform independent assays and a reproducible setup to verify the brachytherapy source output to periodically ensure constancy. Current societal recommendations are summarized and future directions are discussed.
