Automated prediction of dosimetric eligibility for hypofractionated prostate radiotherapy.

Clinical implementation of hypofractionated prostate radiotherapy (PROFIT trial, NCT003046759) represents an opportunity to significantly reduce the burden of treatment on the patient and clinic. However, efficacy was only demonstrated among the patient demographic who could meet the trial dose constraints and so it is necessary to emulate this triage step in clinical practice. The purpose of this study was to build a convenient tool to address the challenge of determining patient eligibility for hypofractionated treatment within the clinic.

Calcifications are potential surrogates for prostate localization in image-guided radiotherapy.

Purpose: To investigate the feasibility of using calcifications as surrogates for the prostate position during cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) image-guided radiotherapy.

Methods And Materials: The twice-weekly CBCT images taken during the treatment course of 4 patients were retrospectively studied for the stability of the calcifications. The geometric center of three fiducial markers was used as the reference.

A method to analyze the cord geometrical uncertainties during head and neck radiation therapy using cone beam CT.

We developed a method to analyze quantitatively the residual cord geometrical uncertainties after image registration during head and neck radiation therapy by using sequential cone beam CT (CBCT). The geometrical centroid line of cervical spinal canal was computed to serve as a cord surrogate. We found that the cord motions were non-uniform from C1 to C6, and that the patterns of motion were variable across patients.