Advisor(s)
Ara Alexandrian
Committee Member(s)
Charles Wilson
Emily Caffrey
School
School of Health Professions
Document Type
Thesis
Department (new version)
Health Professions
Date of Award
9-10-2024
Abstract
High-density objects such as prosthetics, cardiac implanted devices, or surgical clips can create artifacts in computed tomography (CT) images used for radiotherapy planning, leading to regions of inaccurate CT information. These high-density objects may cause artifacts that can impact the accuracy of dose calculations for radiotherapy treatment plans and may require large amounts of a clinician’s time to manually override. Previous research shows that larger ranges of CT numbers can impact the accuracy of dose calculations and that different dose calculations algorithms handle artifacts in CT images differently. Manual correction of voxels affected by high-density objects in CT scans is the standard solution during radiotherapy planning. However, due to the time-consuming nature of manually overriding each scan some physicists prefer to ignore these objects entirely and assign a CT number of 0, which corresponds to water, possibly leading to inaccurate dose calculations. A medium surgical clip made of tantalum (density = 16.6 grams/cubic centimeter) was placed in a tissue equivalent bolus and had the clip and its surrounding area dose measured using radiochromic film. These measurements were compared to dose calculations made by Acuros XB (AXB). This study aims to inform policies and practices on how to manage artifacts caused by these high-density objects and to identify the areas where increased or decreased effort may be necessary.
ProQuest ID
Recommended Citation
Reed, Stephen, "Analyzing the Dosimetric Impact of CT Artifacts from High-Density Objects in Radiotherapy Planning" (2024). All ETDs from UAB. 7573.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/7573
