Effect of the collimator angle on dosimetric verification of volumetric modulated arc therapy

The collimator is usually rotated when planning volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) due to the leakage of radiation between the multi-leaf collimator (MLC) leaves. We studied the effect of the collimator angle on the results of dosimetric verification of VMAT plans for head and neck patients. We studied VMAT plans for 10 head and neck patients. We made two sets of VMAT plans for each patient. Each set was composed of 10 plans with collimator angles of 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 degrees. Plans in the first set were optimized individually, and plans in the second set shared the 30-degree collimator-angle optimization. The two sets of plans were verified by using the 2-dimensional ion chamber array MatriXX (IBA Dosimetry, Germany). The comparisons between the calculation and the measurements were made by using a γ-index analysis. The γ-index (2%/2 mm) and (3%/3 mm) passing rates had negative correlations with the collimator angle. The maximum difference between γ-index (3%/3 mm) passing rates of different collimator angles for each patient ranged from 1.46% to 5.60% with an average of 3.67%. There were significant differences (maximum 5.6%) in the passing rates for different collimator angles. The results suggested that the accuracy of the delivered dose depended on the collimator angle. These findings are informative when choosing a collimator angle for VMAT plans.