Department of Diagnostic Imaging, Molecular Imaging, Interventional Radiology and Radiotherapy, Tor Vergata University General Hospital, Rome, Italy.
The aim of this study was to define a method to evaluate the total dose delivered to the rectum during the whole treatment course in six patients undergoing irradiation for prostate cancer using an offline definition of organ motion with images from a cone beam CT (CBCT) scanner available on a commercial linear accelerator.
Patient set-up was verified using a volumetric three-dimensional CBCT scanner; 9-14 CBCT scans were obtained for each patient. Images were transferred to a commercial treatment planning system for offline organ motion analysis. The shape of the rectums were used to obtain a mean dose-volume histogram (
In all six patients the original rectal DVH for the planning CT scan showed higher values than all DVHs.
Although the application of the model to a larger set of patients is necessary to confirm this trend, reconstruction of a representative volume of the rectum throughout the entire treatment course seems feasible.
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Falco MD, D'Andrea M, Fedele D, Barbarino R, Benassi M, Giudice E, Hamoud E, Ingrosso G, Ladogana P, Santarelli F, Tortorelli G, Santoni R. Are you the author?
Reference: Br J Radiol. 2011 Sep;84(1005):819-25.
doi: 10.1259/bjr/25741415
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 21849366
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