An absorbed dose to water standard for HDR 192Ir brachytherapy sources based on water calorimetry: numerical and experimental proof-of-principle.

Water calorimetry is an established technique for absorbed dose to water measurements in external beams. In this paper, the feasibility of direct absorbed dose measurements for high dose rate (HDR) iridium-192 (192Ir) sources using water calorimetry is established. Feasibility is determined primarily by a balance between the need to obtain sufficient signal to perform a reproducible measurement, the effect of heat loss on the measured signal, and the positioning uncertainty affecting the source-detector distance. The heat conduction pattern generated in water by the Nucletron microSelectron-HDR 192Ir brachytherapy source was simulated using COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS software. Source heating due to radiation self-absorption was calculated using EGSnrcMP. A heat-loss correction k(c) was calculated as the ratio of the temperature rise under ideal conditions to temperature rise under realistic conditions. The calorimeter setup used a parallel-plate calorimeter vessel of 79 mm diameter and 1.12 mm thick front and rear glass windows located 24 mm apart. Absorbed dose was measured with two sources with nominal air kerma strengths of 38 000 and 21 000 U, at source-detector separations ranging from 24.7 to 27.6 mm and irradiation times of 36.0 to 80.0 s. The preliminary measured dose rate per unit air kerma strength of (0.502 +/- 0.007) microGy/(s U) compares well with the TG-43 derived 0.505 microGy/(s U). This work shows that combined dose uncertainties of significantly less than 5% can be achieved with only modest modifications of current water calorimetry techniques and instruments. This work forms the basis of a potential future absolute dose to water standard for HDR 192Ir brachytherapy.