Publications by authors named "Juan A Vera Sanchez"

Clinical implementation of in-beam PET monitoring in proton therapy requires the integration of an online fast and reliable dose calculation engine. This manuscript reports on the achievement of real-time reconstruction of 3D dose and activity maps with proton range verification from experimental in-beam PET measurements. Approach: Several cylindrical homogeneous PMMA phantoms were irradiated with a monoenergetic 70-MeV proton beam in a clinical facility.

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Article Synopsis
  • Proton therapy is effective for cancer treatment, but its success relies on accurate dose distribution, which can be affected by patient anatomy changes, highlighting the need for adaptive approaches.
  • Conventional imaging techniques like CBCT are limited in accurately estimating stopping power ratios (SPR) for proton therapy, leading researchers to explore Deep Learning methods to create improved pseudo-CT images.
  • The authors present a new 3D vision transformer model that effectively reduces SPR errors in pCT images when compared to traditional CT, marking a potential advancement for adaptive proton therapy, although further validation is required for broader clinical implementation.
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Article Synopsis
  • A new calibration method for dual energy CT (DECT) using material decomposition maps for iodine and water has been developed, aimed at enhancing the accuracy of imaging.
  • Experiments conducted on a GE revolution CT scanner showed that the method successfully reproduces Hounsfield unit (HU) values with less than 1% error, validating its effectiveness.
  • This novel calibration offers comparable accuracy to existing methods, while providing better precision, making it particularly beneficial for applications like proton therapy where accurate tissue differentiation is crucial.
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Background: Recent proposals of high dose rate plans in protontherapy as well as very short proton bunches may pose problems to current beam monitor systems. There is an increasing demand for real-time proton beam monitoring with high temporal resolution, extended dynamic range and radiation hardness. Plastic scintillators coupled to optical fiber sensors have great potential in this context to become a practical solution towards clinical implementation.

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Ultra-high dose rate (UHDR) irradiation regimes have the potential to spare normal tissue while keeping equivalent tumoricidal capacity than conventional dose rate radiotherapy (CONV-RT). This has been called the FLASH effect. In this work, we present a new simulation framework aiming to study the production of radical species in water and biological media under different irradiation patterns.

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Proton therapy has advantages and pitfalls comparing with photon therapy in radiation therapy. Among the limitations of protons in clinical practice we can selectively mention: uncertainties in range, lateral penumbra, deposition of higher LET outside the target, entrance dose, dose in the beam path, dose constraints in critical organs close to the target volume, organ movements and cost. In this review, we combine proposals under study to mitigate those pitfalls by using individually or in combination: (a) biological approaches of beam management in time (very high dose rate "FLASH" irradiations in the order of 100 Gy/s) and (b) modulation in space (a combination of mini-beams of millimetric extent), together with mechanical approaches such as (c) rotational techniques (optimized in partial arcs) and, in an effort to reduce cost, (d) gantry-less delivery systems.

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Purpose: A new phantom, designed and manufactured for modulation transfer function (MTF) calculations is presented in this work. The phantom has a star-bar pattern and is manufactured in stainless steel. Modulation transfer function determinations are carried out with the new phantom and with an edge phantom to compare their performance and to compare them with previous theoretical predictions.

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Commercial TPSs typically model the tongue-and-groove (TG) by extending the projections of the leaf sides by a certain constant width. However, this model may produce discrepancies of as much as 7%-10% in the calculated average doses, especially for the High Definition multi-leaf collimator (MLC) (Hernandez et al 2017 Phys. Med.

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Purpose: To provide a multi-stage model to calculate uncertainty in radiochromic film dosimetry with Monte-Carlo techniques. This new approach is applied to single-channel and multichannel algorithms.

Material And Methods: Two lots of Gafchromic EBT3 are exposed in two different Varian linacs.

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Purpose: The accuracy and precision of the dose estimates obtained with radiochromic film dosimetry are investigated in a clinical environment. The improvement in the accuracy of dose estimates reached with corrective methods is analyzed. Two novel re-calibration algorithms for radiochromic film dosimetry are presented.

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The influence of the various sources of noise on the uncertainty in radiochromic film (RCF) dosimetry using single channel and multichannel methods is investigated in this work. These sources of noise are extracted from pixel value (PV) readings and dose maps. Pieces of an RCF were each irradiated to different uniform doses, ranging from 0 to 1092 cGy.

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Adequate modelling of the multi-leaf collimator (MLC) by treatment planning systems (TPS) is essential for accurate dose calculations in intensity-modulated radiation-therapy. For this reason modern TPSs incorporate MLC characteristics such as the leaf end curvature, MLC transmission and the tongue-and-groove. However, the modelling of the tongue-and-groove is often neglected during TPS commissioning and it is not known how accurate it is.

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Purpose: To study how noise and scanner response variability affect radiochromic film dosimetry.

Methods: Five treatment plans were analyzed in this work with two different multichannel protocols: the multichannel algorithm of Mayer et al. and the efficient protocol of Lewis et al.

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Purpose: This note studies the statistical relationships between color channels in radiochromic film readings with flatbed scanners. The same relationships are studied for noise. Finally, their implications for multichannel film dosimetry are discussed.

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