maintaining dignity and respect is among patients’ most fundamental rights. the importance of patient dignity, the status quo, patients’ needs, and a shortage of survey studies in this area were the underlying incentives for conducting this study. this was a cross-sectional descriptive study in which data were collected through patient dignity inventory (pdi). the questionnaire was completed by...

The accurate and quantitative determination of three-dimensional patient setup errors in conformal radiotherapy, including setup errors due to out-of-plane rotations, requires methods for registering pre-treatment, three-dimensional planning CT images with intra-treatment, two-dimensional portal images. We have developed a method for performing such a registration based on structural models tha...

The purpose of this study was to determine the reproducibility of patient-specific, intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) quality assurance (QA) results in a clinical setting. Six clinical patient plans were delivered to a variety of devices and analyses, including 1) radiographic film; 2) ion chamber; 3) 2D diode array delivered and analyzed in three different configurations (AP deliver...

PURPOSE Multimodality imaging has become an important adjunct of state-of-the-art radiation therapy (RT) treatment planning. Recently, simultaneous PET/MR hybrid imaging has become clinically available and may also contribute to target volume delineation and biological individualization in RT planning. For integration of PET/MR hybrid imaging into RT treatment planning, compatible dedicated RT ...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a custom portal image - digitally reconstructed radiograph (DRR) registration software application. The software works by transforming the portal image into the coordinate space of the DRR image using three control points placed on each image by the user, and displaying the fused image. In order to test statistically that the software actually improves ...

INTRODUCTION Ocular injuries commonly involve the lacrimal system. CASE A 14-year-old male had an eyelid injury with a canalicular tear. An angiocatheter tube was used as a stent for canalicular reconstruction. The focus of this report is on the method used, as well as the material for the repair in a rural hospital. CONCLUSION Angiocatheter tube can be a suitable alternative to silicone tu...

This work investigates the use of the tolerance limits on the treatment couch position to detect mistakes in patient positioning and warn users of possible treatment errors. Computer controlled radiotherapy systems use the position of the treatment couch as a surrogate for patient position and a tolerance limit is applied against a planned position. When the couch is out of tolerance a warning ...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study is to investigate intra-fraction setup variability in hypo-fractionated cranial and body radiotherapy; this is achieved by means of integrated infrared optical localization and stereoscopic kV X-ray imaging. METHOD AND MATERIALS We analyzed data coming from 87 patients treated with hypo-fractionated radiotherapy at cranial and extra-cranial sites. Patient ...

PURPOSE In this work, the authors retrospectively compared the accumulated dose over the treatment course for stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) of lung cancer for three patient setup strategies. METHODS Ten patients who underwent lung SBRT were selected for this study. At each fraction, patients were immobilized using a vacuum cushion and were CT scanned. Treatment plans were perform...

PURPOSE Historically, the process of positioning a patient prior to imaging verification used a set of permanent patient marks, or tattoos, placed subcutaneously. After aligning to these tattoos, plan specific shifts are applied and the position is verified with imaging, such as cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). Due to a variety of factors, these marks may deviate from the desired position ...