Clinical 3D Dosimetry in Modern Radiation Therapy

Ben Mijnheer got his PhD at the University of Amsterdam on a study concerning standardization of neutron dosimetry. After working on a neutron therapy project in the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) in Amsterdam, he joined this institution as a clinical physicist. Later he became Head of the Physics Department, Professor at Inholland University, and is until now involved in research projects and teaching activities at the NKI. He served for many years on the editorial board of Radiotherapy and Oncology and Medical Physics Journal, is (co-)-author of about 250 articles and chapters in books, and was supervisor of about 25 PhD theses. He was involved in the organisation of the physics programme of many international scientific meetings, and faculty member of numerous courses dealing with various aspects of radiotherapy for medical physicists, radiation oncologists and radiation therapists, both at the national and international level. He received the ESTRO Breur Gold Medal and Emmanuel van der Schueren Award.

• INTRODUCTION. Introduction and overview. Accuracy requirements for 3D dosimetry in contemporary radiation therapy. INSTRUMENTATION. Detectors for reference dosimetry. Point detectors for determining and verifying 3D dose distributions. Polymer gel dosimetry. Radiochromic 3D detectors. Electronic Portal Imaging Device (EPID) dosimetry. 2D and semi-3D dosimetry systems. MEASUREMENT AND COMPUTATION. Small field dosimetry in photon beams. Special delivery techniques. 4D dosimetry. Light-ion beam dosimetry. Monte Carlo applications in clinical 3D dosimetry. Quantifying differences in dose distributions. CLINICAL APPLICATIONS. Acceptance testing, commissioning, and QA of linear accelerators. Commissioning and QA of treatment planning systems. Patient specific QA: pre-treatment 3D dose verification. Patient specific QA: in vivo 3D dose verification. Audits using end-to-end tests. Brachytherapy dosimetry in three dimensions. Dose outside the treatment volume in external beam therapy. Imaging dose in radiation therapy. Dose verification of proton and carbon ion beam treatments. EMERGING TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS. Dosimetry of small animal precision irradiators. 3D dosimetry in synchrotron radiation therapy techniques. 3D dosimetry in magnetic fields

"[...] I soon realized the wealth of this book: It is a tremendous collection, discussion and summary of important publications and works covering a huge area of dosimetry up to a so far unknown completeness. It is certaily an excellent starting point to either get a first overview on selected aspects or, in my opinion the bigger wealth, to close gaps which may be there after already working on the topic and having first experiences."-Bjoern Poppe, in Z. Med. Physics, 2019“The authors have successfully addressed the most common aspects of radiotherapy physics instrumentation, methods, and processes from an educational and a practical perspective, while expanding into new technologies and future developments. … I would strongly recommend this textbook to any radiation therapy technology medical physics training program, graduate degree program, and anyone who is interested in learning what new technologies and applications are available in radiotherapy clinical dosimetry and detection. … The text includes a wealth of important information, data and guidance that can be beneficial to medical physics residents, graduate students in radiotherapy physics, researchers and clinical professionals that may need a modern reference. I will personally add this to my teaching materials on radiation measurements and detection course ….”-Dimitris Mihailidis, in Medical Physics, January 2020“The current book turns out to be an exceptionally good one….This book addresses the needs of all medical physicists not only those who are working in clinics but also those who are engaged in teaching and research by providing one comprehensive reference resource on the subject, and I am sure no one referring to this book will go disappointed in not finding the information what he/she wanted. … The first thing that strikes the reader is the comprehensiveness of the book – there is practically nothing related to 3D dosimetry that has been left out. It discusses everything under the umbrella of 3D dosimetry in complete justification to its title. … Overall, the book is a valuable addition to the series. I am an avid reader of this series and personally feel that this book is certainly one of the best among all its titles. I strongly recommend to every clinical physicist, researcher, and medical physics teacher to acquire this book.”-Tharmarnadar Ganesh, in the Journal of Medical Physics, April 2019"A book on your desk is only more useful than a Google search when it is both well structured and stikes the balance between being all encompassing and going beyond relevance. I’ve found that "Clinical 3D Dosimetry in Modern Radiotherapy" edited by Ben Mijnheer achieves this balance nicely. The evolution of 3D dosimetry in radiotherapy over the past 20 years is far more a tumbleweed of innovation mixed with pragmatism, than a neat, uniformly organized fabric of knowledge. Yet the opportunity to sit and browse through a book which has all the necessary ideas sorted and clearly explained is a blessing for anyone with an interest in radiotherapy physics. Mijnheer has collected the best minds from around the world to cover the various sub-categories falling under the 3D dosimetry umbrella. … I found that the book successfully fills the gap in teaching material for this specialty of medical physics. From students getting a grip on basic concepts, to mid-career physicists needing a brush-up to experts looking for a reference for overview lectures, this is an ideal resource. In summary, [this book] is an excellent resource for any medical physicist. It provides a compilation of facts, issues, arguments, theory and practical clinical examples, from a wide cross-section of the internation expert dosimetry community."—AFOMP Newsletter, January 2019"If you buy the hardcopy version, this is a large, heavy book offering a thorough overview of the current status of 3D dosimetry for those in working in clinical radiotherapy. …. Editor-in-Chief Ben Mijnheer has recruited an impressive team authors, all international experts in their area of radiation dosimetry. … [T]his is a comprehensive text on 3D dosimetry, aimed at a clinical scientific audience. … [I]t is a very solid and comprehensive textbook, and has little competition."—Dr Mark McJury, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, IPEM Scope, September 2018"…Of particular interest are the sections dealing with small field dosimetry. This is a challenging task that has become very important with the introduction of IMRT, where the resulting dose distribution is built up from a large number of small beamlets. The book gives a very useful overview of instrumentation and correction factors for different detectors. … Many of the measuring techniques for 3D dosimetry also require modelling techniques for reconstruction, evaluation and comparison with calculated dose distributions. The book therefore presents an overview of dose calculation models used for treatment planning and evaluation tools for dose comparisons. Although written mainly for medical physicists, this book is of interest also for other professions and is therefore highly recommended both for clinically active newcomers and veterans. …."—Anders Montelius, Uppsala University, in Acta Oncologica, June 2018"An impressive array of expert contributors helps make this a comprehensive and unique compilation of information on current radiotherapy dosimetry…. this book provides a vast amount of useful information for anyone concerned with RT dosimetry." —Australasian Physical & Engineering Sciences in Medicine, August 2018