Gerencia de Investigación y Aplicaciones, CNEA, Av. Gral. Paz 1499, B1650KNA Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Phys Med. 2013 Sep;29(5):436-46. doi: 10.1016/j.ejmp.2013.01.006. Epub 2013 Feb 23.
Encouraging Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) clinical results obtained in recent years have stimulated intense research to develop accelerator-based neutron sources to be installed in clinical facilities. In this work an assessment of an accelerator-based BNCT facility for the treatment of different tumor targets was performed, comparing the accelerator-derived results with reported reactor-based trials under similar conditions and subjected to the same clinical protocols.
A set of real image studies was used to cover clinical-like cases of brain and head-and-neck tumors. In addition, two clinical cases of malignant nodular melanoma treated at the RA-6 BNCT facility in Argentina were used to thoroughly compare the clinical dosimetry with the accelerator-derived results.
The minimum weighted dose delivered to the clinical target volume was higher than 30 Gy and 14 Gy for the brain tumor and head-and-neck cases, respectively, in agreement with those achieved in clinical applications. For the melanoma cases, the minimum tumor doses were equal or higher than those achieved with the RA-6 reactor for identical field orientation and protocol. The whole-body dose assessment showed that the maximum photon-equivalent doses for those normal organs close to the beam direction were below the upper limits considered in the protocols used in the present work.
The obtained results indicate not only the good performance of the proposed beam shaping assembly design associated to the facility but also the potential applicability of accelerator-based BNCT in the treatment of both superficial and deep-seated tumors.
近年来硼中子俘获治疗（BNCT）的临床成果令人鼓舞，这激发了人们开展激烈的研究，以开发可安装在临床设施中的基于加速器的中子源。本工作对基于加速器的 BNCT 设施进行了评估，以治疗不同的肿瘤靶标，将加速器产生的结果与在类似条件下基于反应堆的试验进行了比较，并遵循相同的临床方案。
使用一组真实的图像研究来涵盖类似临床的脑和头颈部肿瘤病例。此外，还使用了在阿根廷 RA-6 BNCT 设施治疗的两个恶性结节性黑色素瘤的临床病例，以将临床剂量学与加速器产生的结果进行彻底比较。
对于脑肿瘤和头颈部病例，临床靶区接受的最小加权剂量分别高于 30 Gy 和 14 Gy，与临床应用中获得的结果一致。对于黑色素瘤病例，最小肿瘤剂量与 RA-6 反应堆对于相同的场定向和方案相同。全身剂量评估表明，对于靠近光束方向的那些接近光束方向的正常器官，光子等效剂量的最大值低于本工作中使用的方案中考虑的上限。
所获得的结果不仅表明了所提出的束流成型组件设计与设施的良好性能，而且还表明了基于加速器的 BNCT 在治疗浅层和深层肿瘤方面的潜在适用性。
