ABSTRACT
Several national and international medical physics societies established recommendations on the frequencies and tolerances of brachytherapy quality control (QC) procedures. e published reports present an extensive description of the required procedures; hence, the simple repetition of their contents is out of the scope of this chapter. Comprehensive overviews can, for example, be found in the books and book chapters of omadsen (2000), Williamson et al. (1994), and the European Society of Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO) Booklet No. 8 (Venselaar and Pérez-Calatayud 2004). In this chapter, concise descriptions of these procedures are given in combination with frequency tables that provide the medical physicists with useful information to assist with creating and maintaining quality assurance (QA) tasks for their clinical brachytherapy program. e frequencies listed here are essentially taken from consensus American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) and ESTRO recommendations, with a short discussion on the differences in the approaches expressed in their reports. In clinical practice, an increase in test frequency is required when the stability of a system is suspect or when a specic patient treatment method demands special attention. It is also important to note that any national set of legal requirements should be followed.
