ABSTRACT
Clinical Introduction to Brachytherapy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1093
Peter Blake
Chapter 51
Calibration and Quality Assurance of Brachytherapy Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1101
Colin Jones
Chapter 52
Afterloading Equipment for Brachytherapy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1117
Margaret Bidmead and Colin Jones
Chapter 53
Dose Calculation for Brachytherapy Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1131
Philip Mayles
Chapter 54
Brachytherapy Treatment Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1141
Margaret Bidmead and Dorothy Ingham (with Jean-Claude Rosenwald)
Chapter 55
Radiobiology of Brachytherapy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1181
Roger Dale
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1193
This Part deals with all forms of sealed source brachytherapy. Chapter 50 provides a
clinical introduction. This leads to a discussion of the sources available for brachytherapy
(Chapter 51), and methods of afterloading are then considered (Chapter 52). Brachytherapy
treatment planning can be carried out both manually and with a computer, and both aspects are
considered in Chapter 53 and Chapter 54, respectively. Finally, in Chapter 55 there is a section
on the radiobiology of brachytherapy that has a number of considerations that are peculiar to
this form of treatment. Brachytherapy can be time consuming for the Radiation Oncologist
and for this reason its use had declined. However, with the availability of afterloading systems
that allow optimisation of the dose distribution by the use of stepping sources (see Chapter 52)
interest is growing again (Mazeron 2005, Hoskin and Bownes 2006, Guedea et al. 2007).
Bentzen et al. (2005) identified the need for more work to be done on the requirements
for brachytherapy and this was the motivation for the patterns of care study reported by
Guedea et al. (2007), which identified the need for more brachytherapy resources.
Brachytherapy is the ultimate in conformal therapy especially with the possibilities for optimi-
sation that are increasingly becoming available. However, no optimisation technique can
overcome the problem of an implant that misses the intended target geometrically and it is
important that physicists involved in brachytherapy have a firm grounding in the experience of
the more traditional techniques so that the hazards of stepping outside the traditional frame-
work are fully understood.
