Dosimetry of two new interstitial brachytherapy sources

With increased demand for low 103Pd (palladium) seed sources, to treat prostate and eye cancers, new sources have been designed and introduced. This article presents the two new palladium brachytherapy sources, IR03-103Pd and IR04-103Pd that have been developed at Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute. The dosimetry parameters such as the dose rate constant Λ, the radial dose function g(r), and the anisotropy function F(r,θ), around the sources have been characterized using Version 5 Monte Carlo radiation transport code in accordance with the update AAPM Task Group No. 43 report (TG-43U1). The results indicated the dose rate constant of 0.689±0.02 and 0.667±0.02 cGy h-1 U-1 for the IR03-103Pd and IR04-103Pd sources respectively, which are in acceptable agreement with other commercial seeds. The calculated results were compared with published results for those of other source manufacturers. However, they show an acceptable dose distribution, using for clinical applications is pending experimental dosimetry.