• Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.176-182
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• 2015

Head-and-neck cancer is often treated with intensive irradiation focused on the tumor, while delivering the minimum amount of irradiation to normal cells. Since a course of radiotherapy can take 5-6 weeks or more, the repeatability of the patient posture and the fastening method during treatment are important determinants of the success of radiotherapy. Many devices have been developed to minimize positional discrepancies, but all of the commercial devices used in clinical practice are operated manually and require customized fixtures for each patient. This is inefficient and the performance of the fixture device depends on the operator's skill. Therefore, this study developed an automated head-and-neck immobilizer that can be used during radiotherapy and evaluated the positioning reproducibility in a phantom experiment. To eliminate interference caused by the magnetic field from computed tomography hardware, Ni-Ti shape-memory alloy wires were used as the actuating elements of the fixtures. The resulting positional discrepancy was less than 5 mm for all positions, which is acceptable for radiotherapy.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.91-98
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• 2017

Electrical impedance tomography is a nondestructive imaging technique to reconstruct unknown conductivity distribution based on applied current data and measured voltage data through an array of electrodes attached on the periphery of a domain. In this paper, an inverse method based on truncated singular value decomposition is proposed to solve the inverse problem with the generalized Tikhonov regularization and to reconstruct the conductivity distribution. In order to reduce the inverse computational time, truncated singular value decomposition is applied to the inverse term after the generalized regularization matrix is taken out from the inverse matrix term. Numerical experiments and phantom experiments have been performed to verify the performance of the proposed method.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.45-52
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• 2020

Background: Recently, the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) lowered the dose limit for the eye lens from 150 mSv to 20 mSv, highlighting the importance of accurate lens dose estimation. The ICRP reference computational phantoms used for lens dose calculation are mostly based on the data of Caucasian population, and thus might be inappropriate for Korean population. Materials and Methods: In the present study, a detailed Korean eye model was constructed by determining nine ocular dimensions using the data of Korean subjects. The developed eye model was then incorporated into the adult male and female mesh-type reference Korean phantoms (MRKPs), which were then used to calculate lens doses for photons and electrons in idealized irradiation geometries. The calculated lens doses were finally compared with those calculated with the ICRP mesh-type reference computational phantoms (MRCPs) to observe the effect of ethnic difference on lens dose. Results and Discussion: The lens doses calculated with the MRKPs and the MRCPs were not much different for photons for the entire energy range considered in the present study. For electrons, the differences were generally small, but exceptionally large differences were found at a specific energy range (0.5-1 MeV), the maximum differences being about 10 times at 0.6 MeV in the anteroposterior geometry; the differences are mainly due to the difference in the depth of the lens between the MRCPs and the MRKPs. Conclusion: The MRCPs are generally considered acceptable for lens dose calculations for Korean population, except for the electrons at the energy range of 0.5-1 MeV for which it is suggested to use the MRKPs incorporating the Korean eye model developed in the present study.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2024

Proton therapy is known for its superior treatment method due to Bragg peak. To enhance the therapeutic effects of protons, research has been conducted on distributing gold nanoparticles within tumors to increase the absorbed dose. While previous studies focused on handling gold nanoparticles at micrometer and nonometer scale, this study proposes a method to computationally estimate the effect of gold nanoparticles at the millimeter scale. The Geant4 toolkit was applied to computational modeling. Assuming a uniform distribution of water, similar to the human body, and gold nanoparticles, the concentration of gold nanoparticles was adjusted using density ratios. When the density ratio was 5%, the gain in absorbed energy due to gold nanoparticles was nearly twice that of the pure water phantom at the Bragg peak. As the density ratio increased, the gain in absorbed energy linearly increased. When gold nanoparticles were distributed in only one voxel at the Bragg peak, the energy of the protons affected only the neighboring voxels. However, in cases where gold nanoparticles were distributed over a wide area, the volume showing 95% of the maximum absorbed energy (9.46 keV) for the pure water phantom (9.95 keV) exhibited an improvement in absorbed energy over a region 16 times larger, and this region increased as the density ratio increased. Further research is needed to quantify the relationship between the density ratio of gold nanoparticles and the relative biological effect (RBE) in the millimeter scale.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.258-266
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• 2015

The modern radiotherapy technique which delivers a large amount of dose to patients asks to confirm the positions of patients or tumors more accurately by using X-ray projection images of high-definition. However, a rapid increase in patient's exposure and image information for CT image acquisition may be additional burden on the patient. In this study, by introducing structural similarity (SSIM) index that can effectively extract the structural information of the image, we analyze the differences between daily acquired x-ray images of a patient to verify the accuracy of patient positioning. First, for simulating a moving target, the spherical computational phantoms changing the sizes and positions were created to acquire projected images. Differences between the images were automatically detected and analyzed by extracting their SSIM values. In addition, as a clinical test, differences between daily acquired x-ray images of a patient for 12 days were detected in the same way. As a result, we confirmed that the SSIM index was changed in the range of 0.85~1 (0.006~1 when a region of interest (ROI) was applied) as the sizes or positions of the phantom changed. The SSIM was more sensitive to the change of the phantom when the ROI was limited to the phantom itself. In the clinical test, the daily change of patient positions was 0.799~0.853 in SSIM values, those well described differences among images. Therefore, we expect that SSIM index can provide an objective and quantitative technique to verify the patient position using simple x-ray images, instead of time and cost intensive three-dimensional x-ray images.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.38-45
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• 2019

Purpose: To demonstrate the high-resolution numerical simulation of the respiration-induced dynamic $B_0$ shift in the head using generalized susceptibility voxel convolution (gSVC). Materials and Methods: Previous dynamic $B_0$ simulation research has been limited to low-resolution numerical models due to the large computational demands of conventional Fourier-based $B_0$ calculation methods. Here, we show that a recently-proposed gSVC method can simulate dynamic $B_0$ maps from a realistic breathing human body model with high spatiotemporal resolution in a time-efficient manner. For a human body model, we used the Extended Cardiac And Torso (XCAT) phantom originally developed for computed tomography. The spatial resolution (voxel size) was kept isotropic and varied from 1 to 10 mm. We calculated $B_0$ maps in the brain of the model at 10 equally spaced points in a respiration cycle and analyzed the spatial gradients of each of them. The results were compared with experimental measurements in the literature. Results: The simulation predicted a maximum temporal variation of the $B_0$ shift in the brain of about 7 Hz at 7T. The magnitudes of the respiration-induced $B_0$ gradient in the x (right/left), y (anterior/posterior), and z (head/feet) directions determined by volumetric linear fitting, were < 0.01 Hz/cm, 0.18 Hz/cm, and 0.26 Hz/cm, respectively. These compared favorably with previous reports. We found that simulation voxel sizes greater than 5 mm can produce unreliable results. Conclusion: We have presented an efficient simulation framework for respiration-induced $B_0$ variation in the head. The method can be used to predict $B_0$ shifts with high spatiotemporal resolution under different breathing conditions and aid in the design of dynamic $B_0$ compensation strategies.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.32-42
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• 2019

Background: There have been much efforts to develop the proper and realistic machine Quality Assurance (QA) reflecting on real Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT) plan. In this work we propose and test a special VMAT plan of plan-class specific (pcsr) QA, as a machine QA so that it might be a good solution to supplement weak point of present machine QA to make it more realistic for VMAT treatment. Materials and Methods: We divided human body into 5 treatment sites: brain, head and neck, chest, abdomen, and pelvis. One plan for each treatment site was selected from real VMAT cases and contours were mapped into the computational human phantom where the same plan as real VMAT plan was created and called plan-class specific reference (pcsr) QA plan. We delivered this pcsr QA plan on a daily basis over the full research period and tracked how much MLC movement and dosimetric error occurred in regular delivery. Several real patients under treatments were also tracked to test the usefulness of pcsr QA through comparisons between them. We used dynalog file viewer (DFV) and Dynalog file to analyze position and speed of individual MLC leaf. The gamma pass rate from portal dosimetry for different gamma criteria was analyzed to evaluate analyze dosimetric accuracy. Results and Discussion: The maxRMS of MLC position error for all plans were all within the tolerance limit of < 0.35 cm and the positional variation of maxPEs for both pcsr and real plans were observed very stable over the research session. Daily variations of maxRMS of MLC speed error and gamma pass rate for real VMAT plans were observed very comparable to those in their pcsr plans in good acceptable fluctuation. Conclusion: We believe that the newly proposed pcsr QA would be useful and helpful to predict the mid-term quality of real VMAT treatment delivery.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.128-138
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• 2014

In gated radiation therapy (gRT), due to residual motion, beam delivery is intended to irradiate not only the true extent of disease, but also neighboring normal tissues. It is desired that the delivery covers the true extent (i.e. clinical target volume or CTV) as a minimum, although target moves under dose delivery. The objectives of our study are to validate if the intended dose is surely delivered to the true target in gRT and to quantitatively understand the trend of dose delivery on it and neighboring normal tissues when gating window (GW), motion amplitude (MA), and CTV size changes. To fulfill the objectives, experimental and computational studies have been designed and performed. A custom-made phantom with rectangle- and pyramid-shaped targets (CTVs) on a moving platform was scanned for four-dimensional imaging. Various GWs were selected and image integration was performed to generate targets (internal target volume or ITV) for planning that included the CTVs and internal margins (IM). The planning was done conventionally for the rectangle target and IMRT optimization was done for the pyramid target. Dose evaluation was then performed on a diode array aligned perpendicularly to the gated beams through measurements and computational modeling of dose delivery under motion. This study has quantitatively demonstrated and analytically interpreted the impact of residual motion including penumbral broadening for both targets, perturbed but secured dose coverage on the CTV, and significant doses delivered in the neighboring normal tissues. Dose volume histogram analyses also demonstrated and interpreted the trend of dose coverage: for ITV, it increased as GW or MA decreased or CTV size increased; for IM, it increased as GW or MA decreased; for the neighboring normal tissue, opposite trend to that of IM was observed. This study has provided a clear understanding on the impact of the residual motion and proved that if breathing is reproducible gRT is secure despite discontinuous delivery and target motion. The procedures and computational model can be used for commissioning, routine quality assurance, and patient-specific validation of gRT. More work needs to be done for patient-specific dose reconstruction on CT images.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.288-300
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• 2003

Purpose: To obtain regional blood flow and tissue-blood partition coefficient with time-activity curves from ${H_2}^{15}O$ PET, fitting of some parameters in the Kety model is conventionally accomplished by nonlinear least squares (NLS) analysis. However, NLS requires considerable compuation time then is impractical for pixel-by-pixel analysis to generate parametric images of these parameters. In this study, we investigated several fast parameter estimation methods for the parametric image generation and compared their statistical reliability and computational efficiency. Materials and Methods: These methods included linear least squres (LLS), linear weighted least squares (LWLS), linear generalized least squares (GLS), linear generalized weighted least squares (GWLS), weighted Integration (WI), and model-based clustering method (CAKS). ${H_2}^{15}O$ dynamic brain PET with Poisson noise component was simulated using numerical Zubal brain phantom. Error and bias in the estimation of rCBF and partition coefficient, and computation time in various noise environments was estimated and compared. In audition, parametric images from ${H_2}^{15}O$ dynamic brain PET data peformed on 16 healthy volunteers under various physiological conditions was compared to examine the utility of these methods for real human data. Results: These fast algorithms produced parametric images with similar image qualify and statistical reliability. When CAKS and LLS methods were used combinedly, computation time was significantly reduced and less than 30 seconds for $128{\times}128{\times}46$ images on Pentium III processor. Conclusion: Parametric images of rCBF and partition coefficient with good statistical properties can be generated with short computation time which is acceptable in clinical situation.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.281-290
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• 2010

Cone-beam digital tomosynthesis (CBDT) has greatly been paid attention in the image-guided radiation therapy because of its attractive advantages such as low patient dose and less motion artifact. Image quality of tomograms is, however, dependent on the imaging conditions such as the scan angle (${\beta}_{scan}$) and the number of projection views. In this paper, we describe the principle of CBDT based on filtered-backprojection technique and investigate the optimization of imaging conditions. As a system performance, we have defined the figure-of-merit with a combination of signal difference-to-noise ratio, artifact spread function and floating-point operations which determine the computational load of image reconstruction procedures. From the measurements of disc phantom, which mimics an impulse signal and thus their analyses, it is concluded that the image quality of tomograms obtained from CBDT is improved as the scan angle is wider than 60 degrees with a larger step scan angle (${\Delta}{\beta}$). As a rule of thumb, the system performance is dependent on $\sqrt{{\Delta}{\beta}}{\times}{\beta}^{2.5}_{scan}$. If the exact weighting factors could be assigned to each image-quality metric, we would find the better quantitative imaging conditions.