Computer-assisted external-beam dosimetry with special reference to correction calculations and presentation of data

Any computation of a dosage distribution requires three sets of data: the first describing the radiation fields; the second, the parameters of the patient and the proposed arrangement of fields; and, the third, a set of instructions covering the output format. The method adopted for data insertion determines the types and limits of correction that can be applied for effects of irregular body contours etc., whilst the inaccuracies in the inter-stage processing to obtain the final output to a further loss of information