Intra-fractional lung tumor motion monitoring using arbitrary gantry angles during radiotherapy treatment.

Intensity-based 2D/3D registration using kilo-voltage (kV) and mega-voltage (MV) on-board imaging is a promising approach for real-time tumor motion tracking. So far, the performance of the kV images as well as kV-MV image pairs for 2D/3D registration using only one gantry angle (in anterior-posterior (AP) direction) has been investigated on patient data. In stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT), however, various gantry angles are typically used.

Hydroalcoholic Leaf Extract of , alone and in Combination with Calcium Hydroxide, Is Effective against Mono- and Polymicrobial Biofilms of and .

Failures in endodontic treatments are mostly associated with the difficulty in eradicating microbes of the root canal system, highlighting the need to develop novel effective antimicrobials. (pomegranate) leaf hydroalcoholic extract may be a potential alternative in canal dressing, owing to its antimicrobial properties. The objective of this study was to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of hydroalcoholic leaf extract of (HEPg) alone or in combination with calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)) against and in isolation and in mono- and polymicrobial biofilms.

A Study of the Disruptive Effect of the Acetate Fraction of Extract on Biofilms.

Cryptococcosis, caused by yeasts of the genus , is an infectious disease with a worldwide distribution. and are the species that commonly cause this disease in humans; however, infections caused by , especially in immunocompromised patients, are increasingly being reported. Owing to the increase in the resistance of fungi to antifungals, and a lack of treatment options, it is important to seek new therapeutic alternatives such as natural products.

Optimization for customized trajectories in cone beam computed tomography.

Purpose: We developed a target-based cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) imaging framework for optimizing an unconstrained three dimensional (3D) source-detector trajectory by incorporating prior image information. Our main aim is to enable a CBCT system to provide topical information about the target using a limited angle noncircular scan orbit with a minimal number of projections. Such a customized trajectory should include enough information to sufficiently reconstruct a particular volume of interest (VOI) under kinematic constraints, which may result from the patient size or additional surgical or radiation therapy-related equipment.

Are Heart Rate and Rating of Perceived Exertion Effective to Control Indoor Cycling Intensity?

Indoor cycling's popularity is related to the combination of music and exercise leading to higher levels of exercise intensity. It was our objective to determine the efficacy of heart rate and rating of perceived exertion in controlling the intensity of indoor cycling classes and to quantify their association with oxygen uptake. Twelve experienced males performed three indoor cycling sessions of 45 min that differed in the way the intensity was controlled: (i) oxygen uptake; (ii) heart rate; and (iii) rating of perceived exertion using the OMNI-Cycling.

Investigating conditional GAN performance with different generator architectures, an ensemble model, and different MR scanners for MR-sCT conversion.

Recent developments in magnetic resonance (MR) to synthetic computed tomography (sCT) conversion have shown that treatment planning is possible without an initial planning CT. Promising conversion results have been demonstrated recently using conditional generative adversarial networks (cGANs). However, the performance is generally only tested on images from one MR scanner, which neglects the potential of neural networks to find general high-level abstract features.

The first prospective implementation of markerless lung target tracking in an experimental quality assurance procedure on a standard linear accelerator.

The ability to track tumour motion without implanted markers on a standard linear accelerator (linac) could enable wide access to real-time adaptive radiotherapy for cancer patients. We previously have retrospectively validated a method for 3D markerless target tracking using intra-fractional kilovoltage (kV) projections acquired on a standard linac. This paper presents the first prospective implementation of markerless lung target tracking on a standard linac and its quality assurance (QA) procedure.

Clinical implementations of 4D pencil beam scanned particle therapy: Report on the 4D treatment planning workshop 2016 and 2017.

In 2016 and 2017, the 8th and 9th 4D treatment planning workshop took place in Groningen (the Netherlands) and Vienna (Austria), respectively. This annual workshop brings together international experts to discuss research, advances in clinical implementation as well as problems and challenges in 4D treatment planning, mainly in spot scanned proton therapy. In the last two years several aspects like treatment planning, beam delivery, Monte Carlo simulations, motion modeling and monitoring, QA phantoms as well as 4D imaging were thoroughly discussed.

Advanced Radiation DOSimetry phantom (ARDOS): a versatile breathing phantom for 4D radiation therapy and medical imaging.

A novel breathing phantom was designed for being used in conventional and ion-beam radiotherapy as well as for medical imaging. Accurate dose delivery and patient safety are aimed to be verified for four-dimensional (4D) treatment techniques compensating for breathing-induced tumor motion. The phantom includes anthropomorphic components representing an average human thorax.

Automatic quantification of multi-modal rigid registration accuracy using feature detectors.

In radiotherapy, the use of multi-modal images can improve tumor and target volume delineation. Images acquired at different times by different modalities need to be aligned into a single coordinate system by 3D/3D registration. State of the art methods for validation of registration are visual inspection by experts and fiducial-based evaluation.

Physical exercise and functional fitness in independently living vs institutionalized elderly women: a comparison of 60- to 79-year-old city dwellers.

Purpose: To compare functional fitness (FF) levels among independent-living (IL) and day care (DC) elderly women of different age groups and to analyze changes in FF after 8 months of participation in an exercise program intervention for the IL elderly women.

Materials And Methods: A total of 674 elderly women were divided into four IL groups with age in the range of 60-64 years (IL60-64, n=149), 65-69 years (IL65-69, n=138), 70-74 years (IL70-74, n=135), and 75-79 years (IL75-79, n=83), and four DC groups with age in the range of 60-64 years (DC60-64, n=35), 65-69 years (DC65-69, n=34), 70-74 years (DC70-74, n=47), and 75-79 years (DC75-79, n=53). The intervention consisted of a multimodal exercise training, 3 days per week for 8 months.

Relationship of different perceived exertion scales in walking or running with self-selected and imposed intensity.

The aims of this study were to: (1) compare the Heart Rate (HR) and Rating Perceived Exertion (RPE) in training with self-selected and imposed loads, and (2) associate the OMNI-Walk/Run and Borg scales with self-selected and imposed loads, both on a treadmill. Ten trained men (20.3 ± 2.

Chronic effects of strength training vs. Hydro aerobics on functional and cardiorespiratory ability in postmenopausal women.

The current study aimed to compare the effects of two exercise programs (Strength Training and Hydro Gymnastics) on the functional and cardiorespiratory abilities of Portuguese postmenopausal women. The study population consisted of 38 volunteers (age: 66.9 ± 6.

Clinical Assessment of 2D/3D Registration Accuracy in 4 Major Anatomic Sites Using On-Board 2D Kilovoltage Images for 6D Patient Setup.

To provide a comprehensive assessment of patient setup accuracy in 6 degrees of freedom (DOFs) using 2-dimensional/3-dimensional (2D/3D) image registration with on-board 2-dimensional kilovoltage (OB-2 DkV) radiographic images, we evaluated cranial, head and neck (HN), and thoracic and abdominal sites under clinical conditions. A fast 2D/3D image registration method using graphics processing unit GPU was modified for registration between OB-2 DkV and 3D simulation computed tomography (simCT) images, with 3D/3D registration as the gold standard for 6 DOF alignment. In 2D/3D registration, body roll rotation was obtained solely by matching orthogonal OB-2 DkV images with a series of digitally reconstructed radiographs (DRRs) from simCT with a small rotational increment along the gantry rotation axis.

A quantitative comparison of the performance of three deformable registration algorithms in radiotherapy.

We present an evaluation of various non-rigid registration algorithms for the purpose of compensating interfractional motion of the target volume and organs at risk areas when acquiring CBCT image data prior to irradiation. Three different deformable registration (DR) methods were used: the Demons algorithm implemented in the iPlan Software (BrainLAB AG, Feldkirchen, Germany) and two custom-developed piecewise methods using either a Normalized Correlation or a Mutual Information metric (featureletNC and featureletMI). These methods were tested on data acquired using a novel purpose-built phantom for deformable registration and clinical CT/CBCT data of prostate and lung cancer patients.

Real-time 2D/3D registration using kV-MV image pairs for tumor motion tracking in image guided radiotherapy.

Intra-fractional respiratory motion during radiotherapy leads to a larger planning target volume (PTV). Real-time tumor motion tracking by two-dimensional (2D)/3D registration using on-board kilo-voltage (kV) imaging can allow for a reduction of the PTV though motion along the imaging beam axis cannot be resolved using only one projection image. We present a retrospective patient study investigating the impact of paired portal mega-voltage (MV) and kV images on registration accuracy.

Performance validation of deformable image registration in the pelvic region.

Patients undergoing radiotherapy will inevitably show anatomical changes during the course of treatment. These can be weight loss, tumour shrinkage, and organ motion or filling changes. For advanced and adaptive radiotherapy (ART) information about anatomical changes must be extracted from repeated images in order to be able to evaluate and manage these changes.

SU-E-J-90: 2D/3D Registration Using KV-MV Image Pairs for Higher Accuracy Image Guided Radiotherapy.

Purpose: In this work, we investigate the impact of using paired portal mega-voltage (MV) and kilo-voltage (kV) images, on 2D/3D registration accuracy with the purpose of improving tumor motion tracking during radiotherapy. Tumor motion tracking is important as motion remains one of the biggest sources of uncertainty in dose application. 2D/3D registration is successfully used in online tumor motion tracking, nevertheless, one limitation of this technique is the inability to resolve movement along the imaging beam axis using only one projection image.

Monitoring tumor motion by real time 2D/3D registration during radiotherapy.

Background And Purpose: In this paper, we investigate the possibility to use X-ray based real time 2D/3D registration for non-invasive tumor motion monitoring during radiotherapy.

Materials And Methods: The 2D/3D registration scheme is implemented using general purpose computation on graphics hardware (GPGPU) programming techniques and several algorithmic refinements in the registration process. Validation is conducted off-line using a phantom and five clinical patient data sets.

High-performance GPU-based rendering for real-time, rigid 2D/3D-image registration and motion prediction in radiation oncology.

A common problem in image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) of lung cancer as well as other malignant diseases is the compensation of periodic and aperiodic motion during dose delivery. Modern systems for image-guided radiation oncology allow for the acquisition of cone-beam computed tomography data in the treatment room as well as the acquisition of planar radiographs during the treatment. A mid-term research goal is the compensation of tumor target volume motion by 2D/3D Registration.

Endoclamp balloon visualization and automatic placement system.

Objectives: Aortic occlusion is one of the most important open discussions in minimally invasive cardiac surgery. Different techniques can be employed, and all have benefits and drawbacks. The objective of our work is to improve the safety of internal aortic occlusion with the Port Access technique, which employs an endoclamp balloon catheter.

Primary lymphoma of the colon.

Primary lymphoma of the colon is a rare tumor of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and comprises only 0.2-1.2% of all colonic malignancies.