| Gamma Knife Radiosurgery is used to treat brain tumors. The ability to create accurate, fast, and effective treatment plans is crucial to this treatment. Each treatment plan consists of multiple radiation shots, each of various sizes, focuses, and time durations. Each shot consists of multiple radiation beamlets, each concentrating on the focus. Treatment planning consists of creating an initial feasible set of shots, optimizing this set, and computing the dose amount at a certain point for a given shot size and focus. This thesis focuses on aspects of the dose computation by creating a methodology for dose calculation implemented for the Gamma Knife Radiosurgery modality, analyzing properties of the radiation profile, comparing two methods of computing the radiation attenuation distance, contrasting the results from computing the radiation profile and attenuation distance at the beamlet or focus level, and verifying the aforementioned methods against the Gamma Knife treatment planning software. |
