1,721,210 research outputs found
IMRT dose delivery effects in radiotherapy treatment planning using Monte Carlo methods.
No full textInter- and intra-leaf transmission and head scatter can play significant roles in Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT)-based treatment deliveries. In order to accurately calculate the dose in the IMRT planning process, it is therefore important that the detailed geometry of the multi-leaf collimator (MLC), in addition to other components in the accelerator treatment head be accurately modeled. In this thesis Monte Carlo (MC) methods have been used to model the treatment head of a Varian linear accelerator. A comprehensive model of the Varian 120-leaf MLC has been developed within the DPM MC code and has been verified against measurements in homogeneous and heterogeneous phantom geometries under different IMRT delivery circumstances. Accuracy of the MLC model in simulating details in the leaf geometry has been established over a range of arbitrarily shaped fields and IMRT fields. A sensitivity analysis of the effect of the electron-on-target parameters and the structure of the flattening filter on the accuracy of calculated dose distributions has been conducted. Adjustment of the electron-on-target parameters resulting in optimal agreement with measurements was an iterative process, with the final parameters representing a tradeoff between small (3x3 cm2) and large (40x40 cm2) field sizes. A novel method based on adaptive kernel density estimation, in the phase space simulation process is also presented as an alternative to particle recycling. Using this model dosimetric differences between MLC-based static (SMLC) and dynamic (DMLC) deliveries have been investigated. Differences between SMLC and DMLC, possibly related to fluence and/or spectral changes, appear to vary systematically with the density of the medium. The effect of fluence modulation due to leaf sequencing shows differences, up to 10% between plans developed with 1% and 10% fluence intervals for both SMLC and DMLC-delivered sequences. Dose differences between planned and delivered leaf sequences were also investigated and were found to be up to 3% for an example prostate beam. Finally, a method for synchronizing MLC leaf motion with patient intra-treatment motion has been developed to evaluate the interplay of these effects. Although further investigation is warranted this work forms a foundation for the assessment of detailed delivery-related effects in IMRT planning.PhDApplied SciencesBiological SciencesBiomedical engineeringBiophysicsHealth and Environmental SciencesMedical imagingNuclear engineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/125912/2/3224772.pd
Association Between Internal Organ/Liver Tumor and External Surface Motion From Cine MR Images on an MRI-Linac
Full text linkPURPOSES/OBJECTIVES: Historically, motion correlation between internal tumor and external surrogates have been based on limited sets of X-ray or magnetic resonance (MR) images. With the recent clinical implementation of MR-guided linear accelerators, a vast quantity of continuous planar real-time MR imaging data is acquired. In this study, information was extracted from MR cine imaging during liver cancer treatments to establish associations between internal tumor/diaphragm and external surface/skin movement. METHODS AND MATERIALS: This retrospective study used 305,644 MR image frames acquired over 118 treatment/imaging sessions of the first 23 liver cancer patients treated on an MRI-linac. 9 features were automatically determined on each MR image frame: Lung_Area, the posterior (Dia_Post), dome (Dia_Dome), and anterior (Dia_Ant) points of a diaphragmatic curve and the diaphragm curve point (Dia_Max), the chest (Chest) and the belly (Belly) skin points experiencing the maximum motion ranges; the superior-interior (SI) and posterior-anterior (PA) positions of a target. For every session, correlation analyses were performed twice among the 9 features: 1) over a breath-hold (BH) set and 2) on a pseudo free-breathing (PFB) generated by removing breath-holding frames. RESULTS: 303,123 frames of images were successfully analyzed. For BH set analysis, correlation coefficients were as follows: 0.94 ± 0.07 between any two features among Dia_Post, Dia_Dome, Dia_Max, and Lung_Area; 0.95 ± 0.06 between SI and any feature among Dia_Post, Dia_Dome, Dia_Max, or Lung_Area; 0.76 ± 0.29 between SI and Belly (with 50% of correlations ≥ 0.87). The PFB set had 142,862 frames of images. For this set, correlation coefficients were 0.96 ± 0.06 between any two features among Dia_Post, Dia_Dome, Dia_Max, and Lung_Area; 0.95 ± 0.06 between SI and any feature among Dia_Post, Dia_Dome, Dia_Max, or Lung_Area; 0.80 ± 0.26 between SI and Belly (with 50% of correlations ≥ 0.91). CONCLUSION: Diaphragmatic motion as assessed by cine MR imaging is highly correlated with liver tumor motion. Belly vertical motion is highly correlated with liver tumor longitudinal motion in approximately half of the cases. More detailed analyses of those cases displaying weak correlations are in progress
Development and Application of a Random Lung Model for Dose Calculations in Radiotherapy.
Full text linkRadiotherapy requires accurate dose calculations in the human body, especially in disease sites with large variations of electron density in neighboring tissues, such as the lung. Currently, the lung is modeled by a voxelized geometry interpolated from computed tomography (CT) scans to various resolutions. The simplest such voxelized lung, the atomic mix model, is a homogenized whole lung with a volume averaged bulk density. However, according traditional transport theory, even the relatively fine CT voxelization of the lung is not valid, due to the extremely small mean free path (MFP) of the electrons.
The purpose of this thesis is to study the impact of the lung’s heterogeneities on dose calculations in lung treatment planning. We first extend the traditional atomic mix theory for charged particles by approximating the Boltzmann equation for electrons to its Fokker-Planck (FP) limit, and then applying a formal asymptotic analysis to the BFP equation. This analysis raises the length scale for homogenizing a heterogeneous medium from the electron mean free path (MFP) to the much larger electron transport MFP. Then, using the lung’s anatomical data and our new atomic mix theory, we build a realistic 2 1/2-D random lung model. The dose distributions for representative realizations of the random lung model are compared to those from the atomic mix approximation of the random lung model, showing that significant perturbations may occur with small field sizes and large lung structures. We also apply our random lung model to a more realistic lung phantom and investigate the effect of CT resolutions on lung treatment planning. We show that, compared to the reference 1 ×1 mm2 CT resolution, a 2 ×2 mm2 CT resolution is sufficient to voxelize the lung, while significant deviations in dose can be observed with a larger 4×4 mm2 CT resolution. We use the Monte Carlo method extensively in this thesis, to avoid systematic errors caused by inaccurate heterogeneity corrections that occur in approximate clinical dose calculation methods.
Finally, we address potential improvements for our random lung model and some possible future applications.PhDNuclear Engineering & Radiological SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57654/2/lliang_1.pd
Caution Must Be Exercised When Performing Deformable Dose Accumulation for Tumors Undergoing Mass Changes During Fractionated Radiation Therapy
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Adaptive radiotherapy for NSCLC patients: utilizing the principle of energy conservation to evaluate dose mapping operations
No full textTumor regression during the course of fractionated radiotherapy confounds the ability to accurately estimate the total dose delivered to tumor targets. Here we present a new criterion to improve the accuracy of image intensity-based dose mapping operations for adaptive radiotherapy for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Six NSCLC patients were retrospectively investigated in this study. An image intensity-based B-spline registration algorithm was used for deformable image registration (DIR) of weekly CBCT images to a reference image. The resultant displacement vector fields were employed to map the doses calculated on weekly images to the reference image. The concept of energy conservation was introduced as a criterion to evaluate the accuracy of the dose mapping operations. A finite element method (FEM)-based mechanical model was implemented to improve the performance of the B-Spline-based registration algorithm in regions involving tumor regression. For the six patients, deformed tumor volumes changed by 21.2 ± 15.0% and 4.1 ± 3.7% on average for the B-Spline and the FEM-based registrations performed from fraction 1 to fraction 21, respectively. The energy deposited in the gross tumor volume (GTV) was 0.66 Joules (J) per fraction on average. The energy derived from the fractional dose reconstructed by the B-spline and FEM-based DIR algorithms in the deformed GTV\u27s was 0.51 J and 0.64 J, respectively. Based on landmark comparisons for the 6 patients, mean error for the FEM-based DIR algorithm was 2.5 ± 1.9 mm. The cross-correlation coefficient between the landmark-measured displacement error and the loss of radiation energy was -0.16 for the FEM-based algorithm. To avoid uncertainties in measuring distorted landmarks, the B-Spline-based registrations were compared to the FEM registrations, and their displacement differences equal 4.2 ± 4.7 mm on average. The displacement differences were correlated to their relative loss of radiation energy with a cross-correlation coefficient equal to 0.68. Based on the principle of energy conservation, the FEM-based mechanical model has a better performance than the B-Spline-based DIR algorithm. It is recommended that the principle of energy conservation be incorporated into a comprehensive QA protocol for adaptive radiotherapy
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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