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Inclusion of the dose from kilovoltage cone beam CT in the radiation therapy treatment plans
Author(s) -
Alaei Parham,
Ding George,
Guan Huaiqun
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.3271582
Subject(s) - image guided radiation therapy , imaging phantom , radiation treatment planning , cone beam computed tomography , nuclear medicine , dosimetry , thermoluminescent dosimeter , medical imaging , beam (structure) , radiation therapy , cone beam ct , medicine , dose profile , medical physics , radiology , computed tomography , physics , optics , dosimeter
Purpose Cone beam CT is increasingly being used for daily patient positioning verification during radiation therapy treatments. The daily use of CBCT could lead to accumulated patient doses higher than the older technique of weekly portal imaging. There have been several studies focusing on measurement or calculation of the patient dose from CBCT recently. Methods This study investigates the feasibility of configuring a kV x‐ray source in a commercial treatment planning system to calculate the dose to patient resulting from an IGRT procedure. The method proposed in this article can be used to calculate dose from CBCT imaging procedure and include that in the patient treatment plans. Results The kilovoltage beam generated by the CBCT imager has been modeled using the planning system. The modeled profiles agree with the measured ones to within 5%. The modeled beam was used to calculate dose to phantom in the pelvic region and the calculations were compared to TLD measurements. The agreement between calculated and measured doses ranges from 0% to 19% in soft tissue with larger variations observed near and within the bone. Conclusions The modeling of the beam produces reasonable results and the dose calculation comparisons indicate the potential for computing kilovoltage CBCT doses using a treatment planning system. Further improvements in the dose calculation algorithm are necessary, especially for dose calculations in and near the bone.