Numerical calculation of relative dose rates from spherical 106Ru beta sources used in ophthalmic brachytherapy

Concave beta sources of Ru-106/Rh-106 are used in radiotherapy to treat ophthalmic tumors. However, a problem that arises is the difficult determination of absorbed dose distributions around such sources mainly because of the small range of the electrons and the steep dose gradients. In this sense, numerical methods have been developed to calculate the dose distributions around the beta applicators. In this work a simple code in Fortran language is developed to estimate the dose rates along the central axis of Ru-106/Rh-106 curved plaques by numerical integration of the beta point source function and results are compared with other calculated data. (C) 2015 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).