Background and purpose: To assess the feasibility of a treatment planning system in localizing, contouring, and targeting lung lesions along with an evaluation of volume indices of lung involvement in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. Methods: We evaluated 10 patients with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 pneumonia. The CT images were imported into the ISOgray® treatment planning system to anatomically define and contour the volumes of the pulmonary lesions, the lungs, and other nearby organs. Results: The ratio of lung lesion volume to lung volume in this study was 0.11 ± 0.13 (11.13%). The highest mean biosynthesis ratio of lung lesions was 0.36. The ratio of lesion volume in the left lung of patients with the highest volume of involvement, was 0.44, and the ratio of lesion volume in the right lung of these patients was 0.27 (approximately 1.5 times more in the left lung than the right lung). On average, CTDIvol and DLP for all patients studied in our study were 11.22 ± 2.47 mGy and 354.20 ± 65.11 mGy.cm Conclusion: We reported the feasibility of using a treatment planning system in localizing COVID-19 pulmonary lesions and its validity in the volumetric assessment of infected lung regions.

The aim of this study was to quantify the dose enhancement by gadolinium and gold nanoparticles in brachytherapy. MCNPX Monte Carlo code was used to simulate four brachytherapy sources: (60)Co, (198)Au, (192)Ir, (169)Yb. To verify the accuracy of our simulations, the obtained values of dose rate constants and radial dose functions were compared with corresponding published values for these sources. To study dose enhancements, a spherical soft tissue phantom with 15 cm in radius was simulated. Gadolinium and gold nanoparticles at 10, 20 and 30 mg/ml concentrations were separately assumed in a 1 × 1 × 1 cm(3) volume simulating tumour. The simulated dose to the tumour with the impurity was compared to the dose without impurity, as a function of radial distance and concentration of the impurity, to determine the enhancement of dose due to the presence of the impurity. Dose enhancements in the tumour obtained in the presence of gadolinium and gold nanoparticles with concentration of 30 mg/ml, were found to be in the range of -0.5-106.1 and 0.4-153.1 % respectively. In addition, at higher radial distances from the source center, higher dose enhancements were observed. GdNPs can be used as a high atomic number material to enhance dose in tumour volume with dose enhancements up to 106.1 % when used in brachytherapy. Regardless considering the clinical limitations of the here-in presented model, for a similar source and concentration of nanoparticles, gold nanoparticles show higher dose enhancement than gadolinium nanoparticles and can have more clinical usefulness as dose enhancer material.

Background: Electron mode is used for treatment of superficial tumours in linac-based radiotherapy.

No abstract

No abstract