6.3 - Dose Rate
What dose rates are used on your linac? What are the effects of changing dose rate?
Most linacs perform at a high dose rate.
My department uses Varian linacs which run at a dose rate of 600 MU/minute.
- A lower dose rate will increase treatment time. This is unlikely to have any significant change unless the rate of dose falls below 1 cGy/minute, which may allow for cellular repair to occur during treatment. This would require a dose rate of < 1 MU/minute (600 times slower)
