208 research outputs found
Image guided and adaptive radiotherapy for muscle invasive bladder cancer
© 2014 Dr. Farshad ForoudiPublications included in thesis:Foroudi, F., Haworth, A., Pangehel, A., Wong, J., Roxby, P., Duchesne, G., et al. (2009). Inter-observer variability of clinical target volume delineation for bladder cancer using CT and cone beam CT. Journal of Medical Imaging & Radiation Oncology, 53, 100-106. DOI: 10.1111/j.1754-9485.2009.02044.xForoudi, F., Wong, J., Haworth, A., Baille, A., McAlpine, J., Rolfo, A., et al. (2009). Offline adaptive radiotherapy for bladder cancer using cone beam computed tomography. Journal of Medical Imaging & Radiation Oncology, 53, 226-233. 10.1111/j.1754-9485.2009.02066.xForoudi, F., Wong, J., Kron, T., Roxby, P., Haworth, A., Bailey, A., et al. (2010). Development and evaluation of a training program for therapeutic radiographers as a basis for online adaptive radiation therapy for bladder carcinoma. Radiography, 16(1), 14-20. DOI: 10.1016/j.radi.2009.09.002Foroudi, F., Wong, J., Kron, T., Rolfo, A., Haworth, A., Roxby, P., et al. (2011). Online adaptive radiotherapy for muscle invasive bladder cancer: results of a pilot study. International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics, 81(3), 765-771. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijrobp.2010.06.061Foroudi, F., Wilson, L., Bressel, M., Haworth, A., Hornby, C., Pham, D., et al. (2012). A dosimetric comparison of 3D conformal vs intensity modulated vs volumetric arc radiation therapy for muscle invasive bladder cancer. Radiation Oncology, 7:111. DOI: 10.1186/1748-717X-7-111Foroudi, F., Pham, D., Bressel, M., Wong, J., Rolfo, A., Roxby, P., et al. (2012). Bladder cancer radiotherapy margins: a comparison of daily alignment using skin or bone or soft tissue. Clinical Oncology, 24(10), 673-681. DOI: 10.1016/j.clon.2012.06.012Foroudi, F., Pham, D., Bressel, M., Tongs, D., Rolfo, A., Styles, C., et al. (2013). The utility of e-Learning to support training for a multi-centre bladder online adaptive radiotherapy trial (TROG 10.01 BOLART). Radiotherapy Oncology, 109(1), 165-169. DOI: 10.1016/j.radonc.2012.10.019Foroudi, F., Pham, D., Bressel, M., Gill, S., & Kron, T. (2012). Intra-fraction bladder motion in radiotherapy estimated from pretreatment and posttreatment volumetric imaging. International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics, 86(1), 77-82. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijrobp.2012.11.035Foroudi, F., Pham, D., Bressel, M., Hardcastle, N., Gill, S., & Kron, T. (2014). Comparison of margins, integral dose and interfraction target coverage with image guided radiotherapy (IGRT) compared to non-image guided radiotherapy for bladder cancer. Clinical Oncology, 26(8), 497-505. DOI: 10.1016/j.clon.2014.03.007Foroudi, F., Pham, D., Rolfo, A., Bresse,l M., Tang, C. I., Tan, A., et al. (2014).The outcome of a multicentre feasibility study of online adaptive radiotherapy for muscle invasive bladder cancer TROG 10.01 BOLART. Radiotherapy and Oncology, 111(2), 316-320. DOI: 10.1016/j.radonc.2014.02.015Introduction: Bladder cancer is one of the ten most frequent cancers in Australia. It is also the only common cancer for which survival has decreased over the last twenty years. The two curative treatment options for muscle invasive bladder cancer are radical surgery requiring removal of the bladder, or radical radiotherapy (alone or in combination with chemotherapy). Radical radiotherapy allows many patients to keep their natural bladder. As a dynamic soft tissue organ, the bladder size, shape and position vary with bladder and rectal filling, requiring traditional radiotherapy fields to have large margins around the target. With conventional radiation treatment such large margins increase the risk of normal tissue side effects and yet there still remains the risk of missing the bladder cancer on some treatment fractions.
Methods: I have developed an innovative technique with a new device, cone beam computed tomography to match radiation fields and volume on a daily basis to the bladder position and size. This technique reduced the margin of the radiation fields required around the bladder. I have led a number of training programs and their evaluation to teach radiation therapists to conduct such treatments. In addition to the development work, I have conducted a prospective pilot study in 27 participants, of this adaptive radiotherapy technique. Following further refinement I led the multi-centre clinical trial that established the technique as standard of care in a number of institutions.
Results: I found that cone beam computer tomography was of sufficient quality to be used to match radiation fields to the bladder on a daily basis. I determined that such daily matching prior to treatment was better than an ‘offline” process where an average radiation treatment plan was created after several radiation treatments. I found in our pilot study that adaptive radiation treatment decreased surrounding normal tissue irradiation. Separate studies showed that both workshop and e-Learning based radiation therapist training increased confidence and decreased variation from the gold standard (radiation oncologist results). I conducted a number of studies examining appropriate margins for bladder cancer radiation treatment with different imaging techniques. Through a multi-centre feasibility study of 54 participants, I introduced the image guided adaptive radiotherapy technique into a number of Australia centres, and demonstrated that, while technically possible, the margin around the bladder in this protocol was too small.
Conclusions: Image guided and adaptive radiotherapy is possible in many radiation therapy departments with likely benefits for patients in terms of cancer control and reduced normal tissue side effects. Through my work the technique has been established as standard of care in a number of Australian and New Zealand centres. However such radiotherapy techniques can continue to be optimised. Future phase III studies are required to conclusively prove their benefit
A EMOTION-FOCUSSED TREATMENT FOR DECREASING CONJUGAL STRESS- A RANDOMIZED REPRESENTATIVE SINGLE-SITE CONTROLLED STUDY
Objective:
Marital life is closely related to physical, social, and mental well-being. The aim of this study was to determine the reduction in chronic marital life stress among exposed subjects through the emotion re-focus approach.
Methods:
The individuals meeting our inclusion criteria were screened with the help of Stockholm Marital Stress Scale. The cognitive assessment was also made with the help of an Abbreviated Mental Test. The subjects were assigned a random number in a double-blind and independent manner, and half of them were provided eight therapeutic sessions lasting 90 minutes for eight weeks. The remaining ones were provided identical service after the entire data collection. All analyses were carried-out in 99.0% confidence interval, 0.01% type-I error and 1.0% type-II error.
Results:
A total of 138 subjects with marital life stress were allocated to both testing and control group. Both groups did not differ in social, statistical, and clinical variables. The between-group mean stress score did not differ statistically at baseline (p=0.1), but did differ at the culmination (p<0.001). For control group, the mean stress score changed from 2.8, 99%CI 2.7-2.9 to 2.7, 99%CI 2.6-2.8, p=0.1 between pre-post assessment. For testing group, the mean stress score changed from 2.9, 99%CI 2.8-3.0 to 2.4, 99%CI 2.3-2.5, p<0.001 (diff=17.2%, ES=1.40, R2=0.32) between pre-post assessment. The within-group improvement in stress score among subjects from their own baseline was 0-3.8% among control group and 1.9-30.6% in testing group. The sample power was 99.1%.
Conclusions:
Within our strengths and limitations, we may conclude that emotion re-focus may help to overcome chronic conjugal life distress with 0.1% false positive error.
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EICs: Prof. Charalee GRAYDON, JD; Prof. Devender BHALLA, HD
Sparing healthy tissue and increasing tumor dose using Bayesian modeling of geometric uncertainties for planning target volume personalization
Dataset of the study "Exploring the Notion of Risk in Reviewer Recommendation"
This repository contains the necessary data for replicating the necessary information to replicate the study of "Exploring the Notion of Risk in Reviewer Recommendation." This code extends the RelationalGit package (https://github.com/CESEL/RelationalGit) from the study of E. Mirsaeedi and P. C. Rigby [1] and adds some functionality that is needed to incorporate the concept of the fix-inducing likelihood of a project.
In addition to our dataset, this repository also have the supporting materials for our study. The supporting materials are in the "ICSME_online_materials_ICSME.pdf" and contains the following items:
Table 1 contains the detail of the dataset and some related statistics for each of the studied projects.
Table 2 have risk measures that were used in our defect prediction model. We use Commit Guru Tool to extracts the data from the GitHub repositories and then use this data to train our defect prediction model.
Figure 1 illustrates the distribution of predicted defect probability of different projects. This distribution shows how defect probability of different periods are similar to the adjacent periods.
References:
[1] E. Mirsaeedi and P. C. Rigby, ‘Mitigating turnover with code review recommendation: Balancing expertise, workload, and knowledge distribution’, στο Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering, 2020
Reliability Estimation under Scarcity of Data: A Comparison of Three Approaches
During the last decades, the optimization of the maintenance plan in process plants has lured the attention of many researchers due to its vital role in assuring the safety of operations. Within the process of scheduling maintenance activities, one of the most significant challenges is estimating the reliability of the involved systems, especially in case of data scarcity. Overestimating the average time between two consecutive failures of an individual component could compromise safety, while an underestimate leads to an increase of operational costs. Thus, a reliable tool able to determine the parameters of failure modelling with high accuracy when few data are available would be welcome. For this purpose, this paper aims at comparing the implementation of three practical estimation frameworks in case of sparse data to point out the most efficient approach. Hierarchical Bayesian modelling (HBM), maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), and least square estimation (LSE) are applied on data generated by a simulated stochastic process of a natural gas regulating and metering station (NGRMS), which was adopted as a case of study. The results identify the Bayesian methodology as the most accurate for predicting the failure rate of the considered devices, especially for the equipment characterized by less data available. The outcomes of this research will assist maintenance engineers and asset managers in choosing the optimal approach to conduct reliability analysis either when sufficient data or limited data are observed.Ship Design, Production and Operation
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