Purpose: Carbon ion therapy treatments can be monitored non-invasively with in-beam Positron Emission Tomography (PET). At CNAO the INSIDE in-beam PET scanner has been used in a clinical trial (NCT03662373) to monitor cancer treatments with proton and carbon therapy. In this work we present the analysis results of carbon therapy data, acquired during the first phase of the clinical trial, analyzing data of nine patients treated at CNAO for various malignant tumors in the head-and-neck region.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study addresses a fundamental limitation of in-beam positron emission tomography (IB-PET) in proton therapy: the lack of direct anatomical representation in the images it produces. We aim to overcome this shortcoming by pioneering the application of deep learning techniques to create synthetic control CT images (sCT) from combining IB-PET and planning CT scan data.We conducted simulations involving six patients who underwent irradiation with proton beams.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMorphological changes that may arise through a treatment course are probably one of the most significant sources of range uncertainty in proton therapy. Non-invasive treatment monitoring is useful to increase treatment quality. The INSIDE in-beam Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner performs range monitoring in proton and carbon therapy treatments at the National Center of Oncological Hadrontherapy (CNAO).
View Article and Find Full Text PDF. Monolithic scintillator crystals coupled to silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) arrays are promising detectors for PET applications, offering spatial resolution around 1 mm and depth-of-interaction information. However, their timing resolution has always been inferior to that of pixellated crystals, while the best results on spatial resolution have been obtained with algorithms that cannot operate in real-time in a PET detector.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe TRIMAGE project aims to develop a brain-dedicated PET/MR/EEG (Positron Emission Tomography/Magnetic Resonance/Electroencephalogram) system that is able to perform simultaneous PET, MR and EEG acquisitions. The PET component consists of a full ring with 18 sectors. Each sector includes three square detector modules based on dual sstaggered LYSO:Ce matrices read out by SiPMs.
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