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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Stray Radiation Dose From X-Ray And Proton Beam Radiation Therapies, Christopher William Schneider Jun 2019

Stray Radiation Dose From X-Ray And Proton Beam Radiation Therapies, Christopher William Schneider

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The growing population of cancer survivors at risk of radiation induced side-effects is a public health concern. These side-effects include serious conditions such as second cancers, the majority of which occur outside of the primary treatment volume. Radiotherapy treatment planning systems systematically underestimate the dose to tissues out-of-field. Attempts to predict and reduce the risks of radiogenic side effects require accurate and personalized knowledge of the out-of-field radiation dose to patients. The long-term goal of this research is to provide clinical and research tools necessary to reduce the risk of radiotherapy side effects and improve the health outcomes of radiotherapy …


Benefit Of Intensity Modulated Bolus Electron Conformal Therapy For Post Mastectomy Chest Wall Irradiation, John Doiron Jan 2018

Benefit Of Intensity Modulated Bolus Electron Conformal Therapy For Post Mastectomy Chest Wall Irradiation, John Doiron

LSU Master's Theses

Purpose: The delivery of post-mastectomy radiotherapy (PMRT) with bolus electron conformal therapy (BECT) for patients with left-sided breast cancer can reduce second cancer complication probability (SCCP) compared to modern rotational intensity modulated x-ray (IMXT) techniques such as volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) or Tomotherapy. However, rotational IMXT yields superior levels of dose homogeneity compared to BECT. This study investigates the use of intensity modulated (IM) BECT (IM-BECT) to improve dose homogeneity in the chest wall (CW) region of the PMRT planning target volume (PTV) abutted to parallel opposed IMXT tangents for the remaining PTV for a clinically-representative set of patients, …


Simple And Fast Reconstruction Of 6 Mv Radiotherapy Doses To The Whole Body, Lydia Joyce Wilson Jan 2013

Simple And Fast Reconstruction Of 6 Mv Radiotherapy Doses To The Whole Body, Lydia Joyce Wilson

LSU Master's Theses

Background: State-of-the-art radiotherapy medical records include reliable estimates of the therapeutic radiation but are known to underestimate the stray radiation exposures by 40% away from the treatment field. Most commonly, stray radiation exposures are reconstructed using empirical formulas and/or lookup tables containing machine-specific dose measurements. The purpose of this study was to develop a physics-based model to calculate exposures to the whole body of patients who receive external beam photon radiotherapy. Methods: We developed a physics-based analytic algorithm to predict absorbed dose from therapeutic, scatter, and leakage radiation. The model includes separate terms to characterize photon production, attenuation, and scattering …