Measurement and comparison of skin dose for prostate and head-and-neck patients treated on various IMRT delivery systems

Treatment planning systems inaccurately quantify dose deposited to the skin in the course of radiotherapy owing to their inability to properly account for all the surface dose contributing factors. In this work, we describe a technique for accurately measuring skin dose using ultra-thin thermoluminescent dosimeters and EBT gafchromic films. We investigated the variation in average skin dose for prostate and head-and-neck patients undergoing radiotherapy on three IMRT systems including serial/helical tomotherapy, and IMRT-step and shoot system. Helical tomotherapy was observed to deposit the highest average skin dose followed by serial tomotherapy delivery system.