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Development Of A Ct Metal Artifact Management Algorithm For Proton Therapy Planning (Ampp) For Head And Neck Cancer Patients, Daniela Branco

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Purpose: Dental amalgams (high Z materials) are common sources of artifacts in Head and Neck (HN) images. Commercial artifact reduction techniques have been offered, but many are impractical, produce inaccurate CT images or are not clinically available, thus not widely implemented. The goal of this work is to use CT gantry tilts to develop and evaluate a stereoscopic HN metal artifact management algorithm and investigate its improvement in proton treatment planning.

Methods: The in-house CT metal artifact management method for proton planning (AMPP) uses two angled CT scans to generate a single image set with no metal artifacts posterior …

Reduction Of Dose Calculation Errors For Patients With Metal Implants Receiving Photon Radiation Therapy, Jessie Huang-Vredevoogd

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Many patients receiving external beam radiation therapy have metal implants that can affect their treatment, and these metal implants can degrade the accuracy of dose calculations. Dose calculation errors result from limitations of modern dose calculation algorithms in modeling metal/tissue interface effects. Metals also cause streak artifacts in the computed tomography (CT) images that are used for treatment planning, and these artifacts can also degrade dose calculation accuracy. Metal based-energy deposition kernels are a potential solution for the calculation errors associated with the limitations of the convolution/superposition (C/S) dose calculation method as they better model photon interactions and scatter in …