Physics in medicine and biology
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Potential areas where megavoltage computed tomography (MVCT) could be used are second- and third-phase treatment planning in 3D conformal radiotherapy and IMRT, adaptive radiation therapy, single fraction palliative treatment and for the treatment of patients with metal prostheses. A feasibility study was done on using MV cone beam CT (CBCT) images generated by proprietary 3D reconstruction software based on the FDK algorithm for megavoltage treatment planning. The reconstructed images were converted to a DICOM file set. ⋯ A plan with three beams was performed on MV CBCT, simulating a treatment plan for cancer of the pituitary. The distribution obtained was compared with those corresponding to that obtained using the kV CT. This study has shown that treatment planning with MV cone beam CT images is feasible.
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The purpose of this work is to develop an online plan modification technique to compensate for the interfractional anatomic changes for prostate cancer intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) treatment based on daily cone beam CT (CBCT) images. In this proposed technique, pre-treatment CBCT images are acquired after the patient is set up on the treatment couch using an in-room laser with the guidance of the setup skin marks. Instead of moving the couch to rigidly align the target or re-planning using the CBCT images, we modify the original IMRT plan to account for the interfractional target motion and deformation based on the daily CBCT image feedback. ⋯ Three typical prostate cases were adopted to evaluate the proposed technique, and the results were compared with those obtained with bony-structure-based rigid translation correction, prostate-based correction and CBCT-based re-planning strategies. The study revealed that the proposed modification technique is superior to the bony-structure-based and prostate-based correction techniques, especially when interfractional target deformation exists. Its dosimetric performance is closer to that of the re-planned strategy, but with much higher efficiency, indicating that the introduced online CBCT-guided plan modification technique may be an efficient and practical method to compensate for the interfractional target position and shape changes for prostate IMRT.
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A new, very fast, approach for calculations of the electromagnetic excitation field for MRI is presented. The calculation domain is divided in different homogeneous regions, where for each region a general solution is obtained by a summation of suitable basis functions. ⋯ The high speed and accurate reproduction of measurements and FDTD calculations are believed to offer large possibilities for multi-transmit applications, where it can be used for on-line control of the global and local electric field and specific absorption rate (SAR) in the patient. As an example the method was evaluated for RF shimming with the use of 7 T simulation results, where it was demonstrated that the magnetic excitation field could be homogenized, while both the local and average SAR were reduced by 38% or more.
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Arterial spin labelling (ASL) is a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that can be used to provide a quantitative assessment of cerebral perfusion. Despite the development of a number of theoretical models to facilitate quantitative ASL, some key challenges still remain. The purpose of this study is to develop a novel quantitative ASL method based on a macroscopic model that reduces the number of variables required to describe the physiological processes involved. ⋯ The average MTT, CTT and ATT values were 1.75 +/- 0.22 s, 1.43 +/- 0.12 s and 0.32 +/- 0.04 s respectively. In conclusion, a new ASL protocol has been developed by combining the theoretical model with ASL experiments. The technique has the unique ability to provide solutions for varying bolus volumes and the generality of the new model is demonstrated by the derivation of additional solutions for the continuous and pulsed ASL (CASL and PASL) techniques.
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Diffusion tensor tractography (DTT) allows one to explore axonal connectivity patterns in neuronal tissue by linking local predominant diffusion directions determined by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The majority of existing tractography approaches use continuous coordinates for calculating single trajectories through the diffusion tensor field. The tractography algorithm we propose is characterized by (1) a trajectory propagation rule that uses voxel centres as vertices and (2) orientation probabilities for the calculated steps in a trajectory that are obtained from the diffusion tensors of either two or three voxels. ⋯ Results clearly favour probabilities based on two consecutive successor voxels. Evidence is also provided that in any voxel-centre-based tractography approach, there is a need for a probability correction that takes into account the geometry of the acquisition grid. Finally, we provide examples in which the proposed fibre-tracking method is applied to the human optical radiation, the cortico-spinal tracts and to connections between Broca's and Wernicke's area to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method on measured data.