During catheterized x-ray interventions the patient and medical staff is exposed to scatter radiation, as a consequence of tissue interactions. Ionizing radiation for medical purpose is potentially dangerous and can cause malignancy, skin damage and more. Studies have suggested an increase in the prevalence of eye lens cataract, thyroid cancer and left sided brain tumors in doctors. Therefore, ...

Introduction: This study investigates basic dosimetric properties of unflattened 6 MV photon beam shaped by multileaf collimator and compares them with those of flattened beams.Materials and Methods: Monte Carlo simulation model using BEAM code was developed for a 6MV photon beam based on Varian Clinic 600 unique performance linac operated with and without a flattening filter in beam line. Dosi...

The ability of compensators (e.g., bow-tie filters) designed for kV cone-beam computed tomography (CT) to reduce both scatter reaching the detector and dose to the patient is investigated. Scattered x rays reaching the detector are widely recognized as one of the most significant challenges to cone-beam CT imaging performance. With cone-beam CT gaining popularity as a method of guiding treatmen...

A system for cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) based on a flat-panel imager (FPI) is used to examine the magnitude and effects of x-ray scatter in FPI-CBCT volume reconstructions. The system is being developed for application in image-guided therapies and has previously demonstrated spatial resolution and soft-tissue visibility comparable or superior to a conventional CT scanner under condit...

Independent verification of the MU settings and dose calculation of IMRT treatment plans is an important step in the IMRT quality assurance (QA) procedure. At present, the verification is mainly based on experimental measurements, which are time consuming and labor intensive. Although a few simplified algorithms have recently been proposed for the independent dose (or MU) calculation, head scat...

Introduction: Scatter radiation is one of the major sources of error in nuclear medicine data processing. Different methods of scatter correction have been introduced in order to improve the quality of data. However the best method is to avoid recording of scatter photons in acquisition. The only difference between scattered and non-scattered photons is the energy. Pulse height analyzer i...

We examine coding strategies for coded aperture scatter imagers. Scatter imaging enables tomography of compact regions from snapshot measurements. We present coded aperture designs for pencil and fan beam geometries, and compare their singular value spectra with that of the Radon transform and selected volume tomography. We show that under dose constraints scatter imaging improves conditioning ...

The characterization of the incident photon beam is usually divided into its dependence on collimator setting (head-scatter factor) and off-axis position (primary off-axis ratio). These parameters are normally measured "in air" with a build-up cap thick enough to generate full dose build-up at the depth of dose maximum. In order to prevent any influence from contaminating electrons, it has been...

For patient setup of the IGRT technique, various imaging systems are currently available. MV portal imaging is performed in identical geometry with the treatment beam so that the portal image provides accurate geometric information. However, MV imaging suffers from poor image contrast due to larger Compton scatter photons. In this work, an original image processing algorithm is proposed to impr...