Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Strategies For Reducing The Impact Of Tumour Motion During Helical Tomotherapy, Bryan Kim

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Tumour motion presents a significant limitation for effective radiotherapy of lung cancer, and more specifically for helical tomotherapy. The simultaneous and continuous movements of tomotherapy subsystems (gantry, couch, and binary multi-leaf collimator) can lead to inaccurate dose delivery, when combined with tumour motion. In this thesis, we have investigated the impact of tumour motion and strategies to reduce the resulting dose discrepancies for helical tomotherapy, through computer simulations and film measurements performed in a dynamic body phantom. Three distinctively different types of dose discrepancies have been isolated: dose rounding, dose rippling, and the intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) asynchronization effect. Each …

Assessment Of The Dependence Of Ventilation Image Calculation From 4d-Ct On Deformation And Ventilation Algorithms, Kujtim Latifi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ventilation imaging using 4D-CT is a convenient and cost effective functional imaging methodology which might be of value in radiotherapy treatment planning to spare functional lung volumes. To calculate ventilation imaging from 4D-CT we must use deformable image registration (DIR). This study validates the DIR methods and investigates the dependence of calculated ventilation on DIR methods and ventilation algorithms.

The first hypothesis is if ventilation algorithms are robust then they will be insensitive to the precise DIR used provided the DIR is accurate. The second hypothesis is that the change in Houndsfield Unit (HU) method is less dependent on the …