No abstract

A major source of uncertainty in proton therapy is the conversion of Hounsfield unit (HU) to proton stopping power ratio relative to water (SPR). In this study, we measured and quantified the accuracy of a stoichiometric dual energy CT (DECT) SPR calibration. We applied a stoichiometric DECT calibration method to derive the SPR using CT images acquired sequentially at [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. The dual energy index was derived based on the HUs of the paired spectral images and used to calculate the effective atomic number (Z ), relative electron density ([Formula: see text]), and SPRs of phantom and biological materials. Two methods were used to verify the derived SPRs. The first method measured the sample's water equivalent thicknesses to deduce the SPRs using a multi-layer ion chamber (MLIC) device. The second method utilized Gafchromic EBT3 film to directly compare relative ranges between sample and water after proton pencil beam irradiation. Ex vivo validation was performed using five different types of frozen animal tissues with the MLIC and three types of fresh animal tissues using film. In addition, the residual ranges recorded on the film were used to compare with those from the treatment planning system using both DECT and SECT derived SPRs. Bland-Altman analysis indicates that the differences between DECT and SPR measurement of tissue surrogates, frozen and fresh animal tissues has a mean of 0.07% and standard deviation of 0.58% compared to 0.55% and 1.94% respectively for single energy CT (SECT) and SPR measurement. Our ex vivo study indicates that the stoichiometric DECT SPR calibration method has the potential to be more accurate than SECT calibration under ideal conditions although beam hardening effects and other image artifacts may increase this uncertainty.

The purpose of this study was to compare the radiation-induced second cancer risks for in-field and out-of-field organs and tissues for pencil beam scanning (PBS) and passive scattering proton therapy (PPT) and assess the impact of adding patient-specific apertures to sharpen the penumbra in pencil beam scanning for pediatric brain tumor patients. Five proton therapy plans were created for each of three pediatric patients using PPT as well as PBS with two spot sizes (average sigma of ~17 mm and ~8 mm at isocenter) and choice of patient-specific apertures. The lifetime attributable second malignancy risks for both in-field and out-of-field tissues and organs were compared among five delivery techniques. The risk for in-field tissues was calculated using the organ equivalent dose, which is determined by the dose volume histogram. For out-of-field organs, the organ-specific dose equivalent from secondary neutrons was calculated using Monte Carlo and anthropomorphic pediatric phantoms. We find that either for small spot size PBS or for large spot size PBS, a patient-specific aperture reduces the in-field cancer risk to values lower than that for PPT. The reduction for large spot sizes (on average 43%) is larger than for small spot sizes (on average 21%). For out-of-field organs, the risk varies only marginally by employing a patient-specific aperture (on average from  -2% to 16% with increasing distance from the tumor), but is still one to two orders of magnitude lower than that for PPT. In conclusion, when pencil beam spot sizes are large, the addition of apertures to sharpen the penumbra decreases the in-field radiation-induced secondary cancer risk. There is a slight increase in out-of-field cancer risk as a result of neutron scatter from the aperture, but this risk is by far outweighed by the in-field risk benefit from using an aperture with a large PBS spot size. In general, the risk for developing a second malignancy in out-of-field organs for PBS remains much lower compared to PPT even if apertures are being applied.

Please be advised that this information was generated on 2018-05-13 and may be subject to change.Erratum: Measurement of the electron charge asymmetry in pp → W þ X → eν þ X decays in pp collisions at ffiffi s p ¼ 1. The recent paper on the charge asymmetry for electrons from W boson decay has an error in Tables VII-XI that shows the correlation coefficients of systematic uncertainties. The correlation matrix elements shown in the original publication were the square roots of the calculated values.The corrected correlation matrices are shown in Tables VII-XI. The table numbers used here correspond directly to those in the paper. The results of the paper are unchanged except for these tables. PHYSICAL REVIEW D 91, 079901(E) (2015) 1550-7998=2015=91 (7)=079901 (3) 079901-1

Background-Total skin electron therapy (TSET) utilizes high-energy electrons to treat malignancies on the entire body surface. The otherwise invisible radiation beam can be observed via the optical Cherenkov photons emitted from interactions between the high-energy electron beam and tissue.Methods and materials-With a time-gated intensified camera system, the Cherenkov emission can be used to evaluate the dose uniformity on the surface of the patient in real time.