Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Radiation Measurement and Dose Assessment,National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS), National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology (QST), 4-9-1 Anagawa, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8555, Japan
  • 2 Soochow University,China
  • 3 Korea Institute of Radiological & Medical Sciences (KIRAMS), Korea
  • 4 Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, Indonesia
  • 5 National Cancer Hospital, Vietnam
  • 6 St Luke's Medical Center, Philippines
  • 7 Sarawak General Hospital, Malaysia
  • 8 Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University, Thailand
  • 9 Delta Hospital Ltd, Bangladesh
  • 10 Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Oncology, Pakistan
  • 11 Kazakh Research Institute of Oncology and Radiology, Kazakhstan
  • 12 Saitama Medical University International Medical Centre, Japan
  • 13 Tokyo Women's Medical University Hospital, Japan
J Radiat Res, 2017 May 01;58(3):372-377.
PMID: 27864507 DOI: 10.1093/jrr/rrw108

Abstract

A dose audit of 16 facilities in 11 countries has been performed within the framework of the Forum for Nuclear Cooperation in Asia (FNCA) quality assurance program. The quality of radiation dosimetry varies because of the large variation in radiation therapy among the participating countries. One of the most important aspects of international multicentre clinical trials is uniformity of absolute dose between centres. The National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) in Japan has conducted a dose audit of participating countries since 2006 by using radiophotoluminescent glass dosimeters (RGDs). RGDs have been successfully applied to a domestic postal dose audit in Japan. The authors used the same audit system to perform a dose audit of the FNCA countries. The average and standard deviation of the relative deviation between the measured and intended dose among 46 beams was 0.4% and 1.5% (k = 1), respectively. This is an excellent level of uniformity for the multicountry data. However, of the 46 beams measured, a single beam exceeded the permitted tolerance level of ±5%. We investigated the cause for this and solved the problem. This event highlights the importance of external audits in radiation therapy.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.