Absorbed dose distribution analyses in irradiation with adjacent fields

Because the special irradiation technique with adjacent fields is the most used in the case of medulloblastoma treatment, we consider very important to specify some general information about medulloblastoma. This malignant disease has a large incidence in children with age between 5-7 years. This tumor usually originates in the cerebellum and is referred to as primitive undifferentiated tumor. It may spread contiguously to the cerebellar peduncle, floor of the fourth ventricle, into the cervical spine. In addition, it may spread via the cerebrospinal fluid intracranially and/or to the spinal cord. For this purpose it is necessary to perform a treatment technique with cranial tangential fields combined with adjacent fields for the entire spinal cord to achieve a perfect coverage of the zones with malignant cells. The treatment in this case is an association between surgery-radio-chemotherapy, where the radiotherapy has a very important roll and a curative purpose. This is due to the fact that the migration of malignant cells in the body can't be controlled by surgery. Because of this special irradiation technique used in medulloblastoma treatment, we chase to describe in this paper this complex type of irradiation where the implications of the beams divergence in doses distribution are essentials