MRI-Based Proton Treatment Planning for Base of Skull Tumors.

Purpose: To introduce a novel, deep-learning method to generate synthetic computed tomography (SCT) scans for proton treatment planning and evaluate its efficacy.

Materials And Methods: 50 Patients with base of skull tumors were divided into 2 nonoverlapping training and study cohorts. Computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging pairs for patients in the training cohort were used for training our novel 3-dimensional generative adversarial network (cycleGAN) algorithm.

Evaluation of a deep learning-based pelvic synthetic CT generation technique for MRI-based prostate proton treatment planning.

The purpose of this work is to validate the application of a deep learning-based method for pelvic synthetic CT (sCT) generation that can be used for prostate proton beam therapy treatment planning. We propose to integrate dense block minimization into 3D cycle-consistent generative adversarial networks (cycleGAN) framework to effectively learn the nonlinear mapping between MRI and CT pairs. A cohort of 17 patients with co-registered CT and MR pairs were used to test the deep learning-based sCT generation method by leave-one-out cross-validation.

Dose evaluation of MRI-based synthetic CT generated using a machine learning method for prostate cancer radiotherapy.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-only radiotherapy treatment planning is attractive since MRI provides superior soft tissue contrast over computed tomographies (CTs), without the ionizing radiation exposure. However, it requires the generation of a synthetic CT (SCT) from MRIs for patient setup and dose calculation. In this study, we aim to investigate the accuracy of dose calculation in prostate cancer radiotherapy using SCTs generated from MRIs using our learning-based method.

Effectiveness of base-of-skull immobilization system in a compact proton therapy setting.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate daily repositioning accuracy by analyzing inter- and intra-fractional uncertainties associated with patients treated for intracranial or base of skull tumors in a compact proton therapy system with 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) robotic couch and a thermoplastic head mask indexed to a base of skull (BoS) frame.

Materials And Methods: Daily orthogonal kV alignment images at setup position before and after daily treatments were analyzed for 33 patients. The system was composed of a new type of thermoplastic mask, a bite block, and carbon-fiber BoS couch-top insert specifically designed for proton therapy treatments.