Highly attenuating radiation treatment couches are no longer useful in the present era of radiotherapy utilizing IMRT and IGRT. Carbon fibers couch tops with its high tensile strength and low density present a useful alternative. The objective of the current study was to quantify the attenuation of megavoltage photons through a Brainlab imaging couch top and headrest at various angles and field...

The indications for post-prostatectomy radiotherapy have evolved over the last decade, although the optimal timing, dose, and target volume remain to be well defined. The target volume is susceptible to anatomical variations with its borders interfacing with the rectum and bladder. Image-guided intensity-modulated radiotherapy has become the gold standard for radical prostate radiotherapy. Here...

Volumetric imaging and planning for 3-dimensional (3D) conformal radiotherapy and intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) have highlighted the need to the oncology community to better understand the geometric uncertainties inherent in the radiotherapy delivery process, including setup error (interfraction) as well as organ motion during treatment (intrafraction). This has ushered in the develop...

In recent year, Deformable Image Registration (DIR) has become commercially available in the field of radiotherapy. DIR is an exciting and interesting technology for multi-modality image fusion, anatomic image segmentation, Four-dimensional (4D) dose accumulation and lung functional (ventilation) imaging. Furthermore, DIR is playing an important role in modern radiotherapy included Image-Guided...

Image-guided small animal irradiators have the potential to make a significant impact on facilitating the translation of radiobiological research into the clinic. To fully exploit the improved precision in dose delivery to the target/tumour while minimizing dose to surrounding tissues, minimal positional error in the target is required. However, for many sites within the thorax and abdomen, res...

The accurate contour delineation of the target and/or organs at risk (OAR) is essential in treatment planning for image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT). Although many automatic contour delineation approaches have been proposed, few of them can fulfill the necessities of applications in terms of accuracy and efficiency. Moreover, clinicians would like to analyze the characteristics of regions of...

Dear Editor, Over the last few years, medical LINAC manufacturers have started to offer couch tops or inserts designed for image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT). These couch tops have a homogeneous construction, with a carbon fiber shell and no metal components. Although the use of these couches may offer some advantages in image quality, it can have a potentially serious impact on skin sparing...

There is significant interest in delivering precisely targeted small-volume radiation treatments, in the pre-clinical setting, to study dose-volume relationships with tumor control and normal tissue damage. In this work we investigate the IGRT targeting accuracy of the XRad225Cx system from Precision x-Ray using high resolution 3D dosimetry techniques. Initial results revealed a significant tar...

The use of image-guidance in surgery and radiotherapy has significantly improved patient outcome in neurosurgery and radiotherapy treatments. This work developed volume definition and verification techniques for image-guided applications, using a number of algorithms ranging from image processing to visualization. Stereoscopic visualization, volumetric tumor model overlaid on an ultrasound imag...