In vivo assessment of tissue-specific radiological parameters with intra- and inter-patient variation using dual-energy computed tomography.

Purpose/objective: Experimental in vivo determination of radiological tissue parameters of organs in the head and pelvis within a large patient cohort, expanding on the current standard human tissue database summarized in ICRU46.

Material/methods: Relative electron density (RED), effective atomic number (EAN) and stopping-power ratio (SPR) were obtained from clinical dual-energy CT scans using a clinically validated DirectSPR implementation and organ segmentations of 107 brain-tumor (brain, brainstem, spinal cord, chiasm, optical nerve, lens) and 120 pelvic cancer patients (prostate, kidney, liver, bladder). The impact of contamination by surrounding tissues on the tissue parameters was reduced with a dedicated contour adaption routine. Tissue parameters were characterized regarding the cohort mean value as well as the variation within each patient (2σ) and between patients (2σ). For the brain, age-dependent differences were determined.

Results: For 10 organs, including 4 structures not listed in ICRU46, the mean RED, EAN and SPR as well as their respective intra- and inter-patient variation were determined. SPR intra-patient variation was higher than 1.3% (1.3-4.6%) in all organs and always exceeded the inter-patient variation of the organ mean SPR (0.6-2.1%). For the brain, a significant SPR variation between pediatric and non-pediatric patients was determined.

Conclusion: Radiological tissue parameters in the head and pelvis were characterized in vivo for a large patient cohort using dual-energy CT. This reassesses parts of the current standard database defined in ICRU46, furthermore complementing the data described in literature by smaller substructures in the brain as well as by the quantification of organ-specific inter- and intra-patient variation.