Gynecological brachytherapy hybrid training: The Tata Memorial Centre and BrachyAcademy experience.

Purpose: The lack of training is a significant barrier to practicing brachytherapy (BT). Tata Memorial Centre, alongside international BT experts and BrachyAcademy, developed a hybrid gynecological BT training module. This study outlines the preparation, organization, and execution of the 2022-2023 Mumbai training, evaluates its effectiveness, and highlights areas for improvement.

Implementation of online workshops on image-guided adaptive brachytherapy (interventional radiotherapy) in locally advanced cervical cancer: Experience of BrachyAcademy.

Purpose: To provide educational support to brachytherapy users during the COVID-19 pandemic, online workshops were developed and implemented by BrachyAcademy, non-profit peer-to-peer educational initiative in Elekta.

Methods And Materials: In 2021-2022 two online workshops were organized. Participating teams had to send a clinical case of locally advanced cervical cancer (LACC) including brachytherapy Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) files and questions to the faculty.

Radiation treatment planning with an integrated positron emission and computer tomography (PET/CT): a feasibility study.

Purpose: To investigate the usefulness of hardware coregistered PET/CT images for target volume definition.

Methods And Materials: Thirty-nine patients presenting with various solid tumors were investigated. CT and a FDG-PET were obtained in treatment position in an integrated PET/CT scanner, and coregistered images were used for treatment planning.

Cause and magnitude of the error induced by oral CT contrast agent in CT-based attenuation correction of PET emission studies.

Unlabelled: CT images represent essentially noiseless maps of photon attenuation at a range of 40-140 keV. Current dual-modality PET/CT scanners transform them into attenuation coefficients at 511 keV and use these for PET attenuation correction. The proportional scaling algorithms hereby used account for the different properties of soft tissue and bone but are not prepared to handle material with other attenuation characteristics, such as oral CT contrast agents.

Impact of whole-body 18F-FDG PET on staging and managing patients for radiation therapy.

Unlabelled: Whole-body PET with (18)F-FDG has proven to be a very effective imaging modality for staging of malignant tumors. This study was performed to evaluate the impact of (18)F-FDG PET on staging and managing patients for radiation therapy.

Methods: The treatment records of 202 consecutive patients (98 male, 104 female; mean age, 56.

Application of oral contrast media in coregistered positron emission tomography-CT.

Objective: Coregistration of positron emission tomography (PET) and CT images results in significantly improved localization of abnormal FDG uptake compared with PET images alone. For delineation of intestinal structures, application of oral contrast media is a standard procedure in CT. The influence of oral contrast agents in PET imaging using CT data for attenuation correction was evaluated in a comparative study on an in-line PET-CT system.