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
9-9-2024
Abstract
Radiotherapy planning can be adversely affected by inaccurate dose calculations due to the presence of high-density objects. High-density objects, such as surgical clips, produce artifacts in CT images which can result in errors in dose calculation. Manual correction of voxels containing incorrect information is recommended to prevent calculation errors, but this process can be cumbersome and sometimes results in planners compromising with crude corrections to save time. In this study we aim to determine the significance of small high-density objects and the artifacts they cause in radiotherapy treatment plans. To evaluate the impact of density overrides on calculations, a phantom was put together consisting of two water equivalent plastic slabs, a water-equivalent bolus, and a medium tantalum surgical clip inserted inside the bolus. The phantom was scanned using a Philips Big Bore CT scanner set to a 16-bit scale with a 0.9 mm slice thickness and 0.45 mm overlap slice to minimize voxel averaging differences at the location of the clip. A radiotherapy plan was created using a virtual tumor emulating a 1 cm diameter soft tissue tumor with the surgical clip at the center. Calculations were made using AcurosXB (AXB) dose calculation algorithm. Dose distribution was quantified for a plan in which 1600 cGy was to be delivered to the target uniformly and results were then compared to dose distributions found using our created software.
ProQuest ID
Recommended Citation
Blue, Kylie, "Radiotherapy Dose Calculation Algorithm Sensitivity To High-Density Artifacts" (2024). All ETDs from UAB. 7653.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/7653
