Background: Skin cancer can be treated by
various methods. Electron radiotherapy has been a
useful therapeutic modality in the treatment of skin
cancers in areas which are difficult to cure by other
methods. Depth dose distribution of 166Ho using
VARSKIN2 code is presented in this work. Material
and Methods: Depth dose distribution of 166Ho was
calculated, using VARSKIN2 code by adding of 166Ho
data to the library of VARSKIN2 code. After adding
166Ho radionuclide data to the library of the code, it
was run for various input parameters including:
density, air gap thickness, radiation time and
different source geometry. Different forms of sources
which have been used in this research are 2-D disk,
cylindrical and spherical shapes. Results: The result
showed that the skin absorbed depth dose variation
was an exponential function because of short range
of beta ray. Dose gradient was very high near the
sources. For the same activity, disk source induced a
dose more than spherical and cylindrical source to
skin surface. Conclusion: Superficial skin tumors
could be successfully treated by topical application of
beta-emitting 166Ho source. VARSKIN2 is a fast,
accurate and user friendly code for beta dosimetry
and can be used for dose optimization calculation,
especially in beta source over the human skin. Iran. J.
Radiat. Res., 2010 8 (1): 45-49
Mowlavi A, Afzali A, Afzali N. Adding 166Ho data to VARSKIN2 code and dose calculation to human skin. Int J Radiat Res 2010; 8 (1) :45-49 URL: http://ijrr.com/article-1-609-en.html