Iterative metal artifact reduction improves dose calculation accuracy : Phantom study with dental implants.

Purpose: Metallic dental implants cause severe streaking artifacts in computed tomography (CT) data, which affect the accuracy of dose calculations in radiation therapy. The aim of this study was to investigate the benefit of the metal artifact reduction algorithm iterative metal artifact reduction (iMAR) in terms of correct representation of Hounsfield units (HU) and dose calculation accuracy.

Materials And Methods: Heterogeneous phantoms consisting of different types of tissue equivalent material surrounding metallic dental implants were designed.