Health and Medical Physics Commons^™

Development And Applications Of A Real-Time Magnetic Electron Energy Spectrometer For Use With Medical Linear Accelerators, Paul Ethan Maggi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Purpose – This work presents a design for a real-time electron energy spectrometer, and provides data analysis methods and characterization of the real-time system. This system is intended for use with medical linear accelerators (linacs). The goal is 1 Hz acquisition of the energy range 4-25 MeV, reconstructed in 0.1 MeV increments.

Methods – Our spectrometer uses a nominal 0.54 T permanent magnet block as the dispersive element and scintillating fibers coupled to a CCD camera as the position sensitive detector. A broad electron beam produced by a linac is collimated by a 6.35 mm dimeter aperture at the entrance …

Proposed Method For Measuring The Let Of Radiotherapeutic Particle Beams, Stephen D. Bello

Physics & Astronomy ETDs

The Bragg peak geometry of the depth dose distributions for hadrons allows for precise and effective dose delivery to tumors while sparing neighboring healthy tissue. Further, compared against other forms of radiotherapeutic treatments, such as electron beam therapy (EBT) or photons (x and \(\gamma\)-rays), hadrons create denser ionization events along the particle track, which induces irreparable damage to DNA, and thus are more effective at inactivating cancerous cells. The measurement of radiation's ability to inactivate cellular reproduction is the relative biological effectiveness (RBE). A quality related to the RBE that is a measurable physical property is the linear energy transfer …

An Algorithm To Improve Deformable Image Registration Accuracy In Challenging Cases Of Locally-Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer, Christopher L. Guy

Theses and Dissertations

A common co-pathology of large lung tumors located near the central airways is collapse of portions of lung due to blockage of airflow by the tumor. Not only does the lung volume decrease as collapse occurs, but fluid from capillaries also fills the space no longer occupied by air, greatly altering tissue appearance. During radiotherapy, typically administered to the patient over multiple weeks, the tumor can dramatically shrink in response to the treatment, restoring airflow to the lung sections which were collapsed when therapy began. While return of normal lung function is a positive development, the change in anatomy presents …