An investigation of clinical treatment field delivery verification using cherenkov imaging: IMRT positioning shifts and field matching.

Purpose: Cherenkov light emission has been shown to correlate with ionizing radiation dose delivery in solid tissue. An important clinical application of Cherenkov light is the real-time verification of radiation treatment delivery in vivo. To test the feasibility of treatment field verification, Cherenkov light images were acquired concurrent with radiation beam delivery to standard and anthropomorphic phantoms.

Dosimetric verification and commissioning for a small animal image-guided irradiator.

In recent years, small animal image-guided irradiators have been widely utilized in preclinical studies involving rodent models. However, the dosimetry commissioning of such equipment involving kilovoltage small-field dosimetry has not received as much interest as the megavoltage small-field dosimetry used clinically. To date, a paucity of measured kilovoltage beam data, especially for field sizes less than 3 mm, can be found in the literature.

Dosimetric and geometric characteristics of a small animal image-guided irradiator using 3D dosimetry/optical CT scanner.

Purpose: The precise dosimetric and geometric characteristics of small animal irradiators are essential to achieving reproducible dose delivery, especially in cases where image-guidance is utilized. Currently, radiochromic film is the established measurement tool used to evaluate beam characteristics for these systems. However, only 2D information can be acquired with film.

Quality Assessment of Stereotactic Radiosurgery of a Melanoma Brain Metastases Model Using a Mouselike Phantom and the Small Animal Radiation Research Platform.

Purpose: To establish a novel preclinical model for stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) with combined mouselike phantom quality assurance in the setting of brain metastases.

Methods And Materials: C57B6 mice underwent intracranial injection of B16-F10 melanoma cells. T1-weighted postcontrast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed on day 11 after injection.

Automatic deformable surface registration for medical applications by radial basis function-based robust point-matching.

Deformable surface mesh registration is a useful technique for various medical applications, such as intra-operative treatment guidance and intra- or inter-patient study. In this paper, we propose an automatic deformable mesh registration technique. The proposed method iteratively deforms a source mesh to a target mesh without manual feature extraction.

Accuracy of surface registration compared to conventional volumetric registration in patient positioning for head-and-neck radiotherapy: a simulation study using patient data.

Purpose: 3D optical surface imaging has been applied to patient positioning in radiation therapy (RT). The optical patient positioning system is advantageous over conventional method using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) in that it is radiation free, frameless, and is capable of real-time monitoring. While the conventional radiographic method uses volumetric registration, the optical system uses surface matching for patient alignment.

Toward a web-based real-time radiation treatment planning system in a cloud computing environment.

To exploit the potential dosimetric advantages of intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT), an in-depth approach is required to provide efficient computing methods. This needs to incorporate clinically related organ specific constraints, Monte Carlo (MC) dose calculations, and large-scale plan optimization. This paper describes our first steps toward a web-based real-time radiation treatment planning system in a cloud computing environment (CCE).

Modelling and Monte Carlo organ dose calculations for workers walking on ground contaminated with Cs-137 and Co-60 gamma sources.

A pair of walking phantoms was developed from deformable mesh phantoms to represent individuals walking on contaminated ground. The Monte Carlo N-particle extended version code was used to calculate organ doses from ground contamination scenarios involving parallel and isotropic planar sources of Cs-137 and Co-60 with concentrations of 30 kBqm(-2). For the parallel plane source case, the organ doses were up to 78 % greater for walking phantoms than those for the standing phantoms.

Deformable adult human phantoms for radiation protection dosimetry: anthropometric data representing size distributions of adult worker populations and software algorithms.

Computational phantoms representing workers and patients are essential in estimating organ doses from various occupational radiation exposures and medical procedures. Nearly all existing phantoms, however, were purposely designed to match internal and external anatomical features of the Reference Man as defined by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). To reduce uncertainty in dose calculations caused by anatomical variations, a new generation of phantoms of varying organ and body sizes is needed.

RPI-AM and RPI-AF, a pair of mesh-based, size-adjustable adult male and female computational phantoms using ICRP-89 parameters and their calculations for organ doses from monoenergetic photon beams.

This paper describes the development of a pair of adult male and adult female computational phantoms that are compatible with anatomical parameters for the 50th percentile population as specified by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). The phantoms were designed entirely using polygonal mesh surfaces--a Boundary REPresentation (BREP) geometry that affords the ability to efficiently deform the shape and size of individual organs, as well as the body posture. A set of surface mesh models, from Anatomium 3D P1 V2.

Design and test of a PC-based portable three-dimensional ultrasound software system Ultra3D.

Currently, portable ultrasound units lack three-dimensional (3D) image display, limiting their potential usefulness especially under remote and hostile operating environments where information must be intuitive and objective. A freehand 3D image processing and visualization software package, Ultra3D, has been developed and tested, especially to work with a miniaturized linear-array transducer probe that is connected to a laptop PC. This paper presents the software design and method to integrate Ultra3D into Terason's miniaturized SmartProbe for freehand 3D ultrasound imaging.

Pulmonary nodules: automated detection on CT images with morphologic matching algorithm--preliminary results.

Institutional review board approval was obtained. Informed patient consent was not required for this retrospective study, which involved review of previously obtained image data. Patient confidentiality was protected; the study was compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.