Principles of Tissue Compensation in Radiation Therapy

Tissue compensation film for radiotherapy covers and fits the body surface of the radiotherapy site to compensate for tissue filling, promotes the uniform distribution of radiation dose, and achieves better therapeutic effects. There are two types of compensation films generally used: one is the equivalent Tissue compensator, which is a tissue equivalent material used to reduce the maximum dose depth, can be used to replace the kilovolt radiation compensator to flatten the surface profile; the other is called radiotherapy compensation film, which is the most common equivalent The tissue compensator is often a film made of a thermoplastic material. Because it can compensate for the built-up effect, it is also called a radiotherapy compensation film. This compensation film is what we routinely use. It has a thickness of 0.5cm or 1cm. It is necessary to use a compensation film with a relative thickness.

Everyone knows that radiation therapy is a tumor treatment method that uses radiation to kill tumor cells. According to the characteristics of radiation, we mainly use the built-up effect of radiation to treat tumors. The surface dose will decrease with the increase of ray energy until the maximum dose point is reached at a certain depth. The depth from the surface to the maximum dose point is called the dose built-up area, and this effect is called the built-up effect. When performing tumor radiotherapy, sometimes the dose in the superficial area may be insufficient due to the built-up effect. At this time, it is necessary to use a tissue compensation membrane to increase the dose in the superficial area of the tumor to achieve the therapeutic effect.

The compensation film is mainly suitable for people who need to compensate and enhance the dose and positioning of body surface tissue, sunken tissue, and irregular tissue in radiation therapy, such as chest wall irradiation of breast cancer, nasopharyngeal cancer, cervical lymphoma, skin cancer and other body surface tumors For radiotherapy, the doctor will add the use of compensation film according to the needs of each patient.