A multi-year project involving multiple institutions and coordinated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has culminated in a paper published in the journal Physics in Medicine & Biology. The paper, co-authored by Dr David Burns at the BIPM, provides definitive values for the critical correction factors k_Q that enter in the determination of the radiotherapy dose to cancer patients. The new values are derived from a combination of experiment and state-of-the-art Monte Carlo calculations at numerous NMIs and other institutes and have an uncertainty almost a factor of two better than the values currently recommended. They will be incorporated into the IAEA Code of Practice (TRS-398) used by clinicians when evaluating the dose output from their treatment machines. This Code of Practice is currently being revised by a small working group with BIPM participation.

Contact David Burns for more information.