Investigation of real tissue water equivalent path lengths using an efficient dose extinction method.

For proton therapy, an accurate conversion of CT HU to relative stopping power (RSP) is essential. Validation of the conversion based on real tissue samples is more direct than the current practice solely based on tissue substitutes and can potentially address variations over the population. Based on a novel dose extinction method, we measured water equivalent path lengths (WEPL) on animal tissue samples to evaluate the accuracy of CT HU to RSP conversion and potential variations over a population.

Modelling blood flow and metabolism in the piglet brain during hypoxia-ischaemia: simulating pH changes.

We describe the extension of a computational model of blood flow and metabolism in the piglet brain to investigate changes in neonatal intracellular brain pH during hypoxia-ischemia (HI). The model is able to simulate near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) measurements obtained from HI experiments conducted in piglets. We adopt a method of using (31)P-MRS data to estimate of intracellular pH and compare measured pH and oxygenation with their modelled counterparts.