The influence of CT image noise on proton range calculation in radiotherapy planning.

The purpose of this note is to evaluate the relationship between the stochastic errors in CT numbers and the standard deviation of the computed proton beam range in radiotherapy planning. The stochastic voxel-to-voxel variation in CT numbers called 'noise,' may be due to signal registration, processing and numerical image reconstruction technique. Noise in CT images may cause a deviation in the computed proton range from the physical proton range, even assuming that the error due to CT number-stopping power calibration is removed.