Copyright
©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Radiation dose enhancement in skin therapy with nanoparticle addition: A Monte Carlo study on kilovoltage photon and megavoltage electron beams
Xiao J Zheng, Department of Physics, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada
James C L Chow, Radiation Medicine Program, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5G 2M9, Canada
Author contributions: Zheng XJ performed the Monte Carlo experiments and data analyses which were reviewed by Chow JCL; the figures of the manuscript were prepared by Zheng XJ and Chow JCL; Chow JCL designed the study and wrote the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study does not involve any human or animal subject.
Informed consent statement: This study does not involve any human subject.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: James C L Chow, PhD, Radiation Medicine Program, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Toronto, 610 University Avenue, Toronto, ON M5G 2M9, Canada. james.chow@rmp.uhn.on.ca
Telephone: +1-416-9464501 Fax: +1-416-9466566
Received: August 11, 2016
Peer-review started: August 11, 2016
First decision: September 28, 2016
Revised: October 24, 2016
Accepted: December 7, 2016
Article in press: December 9, 2016
Published online: February 28, 2017
Processing time: 200 Days and 14.7 Hours
Peer-review started: August 11, 2016
First decision: September 28, 2016
Revised: October 24, 2016
Accepted: December 7, 2016
Article in press: December 9, 2016
Published online: February 28, 2017
Processing time: 200 Days and 14.7 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: This paper investigated the dose enhancement effect due to nanoparticle addition using the kilovoltage (kV) photon and megavoltage (MV) electron beams in skin therapy. Dose enhancements of skin layers with different thicknesses were studied with various nanoparticle types, nanoparticle concentrations, radiation beam types and beam energies using Monte Carlo simulation. From the results, it is found that kV photon beams can achieve much higher dose enhancements at the skin compared to MV electron beams. Moreover, gold nanoparticles, which had the highest atomic number in our study, provided the highest dose enhancement for nanoparticle-enhanced skin therapy.