ABSTRACT
The VoxTox research programme has applied expertise from the physical sciences to the problem of radiotherapy toxicity, bringing together expertise from engineering, mathematics, high energy physics (including the Large Hadron Collider), medical physics and radiation oncology. In our initial cohort of 109 men treated with curative radiotherapy for prostate cancer, daily image guidance computed tomography (CT) scans have been used to calculate delivered dose to the rectum, as distinct from planned dose, using an automated approach. Clinical toxicity data have been collected, allowing us to address the hypothesis that delivered dose provides a better predictor of toxicity than planned dose.
ABSTRACT
Optoacoustic tomography is a fast developing imaging modality, combining the high contrast available from optical excitation of tissue with the high resolution and penetration depth of ultrasound detection. Light is subject to both absorption and scattering when traveling through tissue; adequate knowledge of tissue optical properties and hence the spatial fluence distribution is required to create an optoacoustic image that is directly proportional to chromophore concentrations at all depths. Using data from a commercial multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) system, we implemented an iterative optimization for fluence correction based on a finite-element implementation of the delta-Eddington approximation to the Radiative Transfer Equation (RTE). We demonstrate a linear relationship between the image intensity and absorption coefficients across multiple wavelengths and depths in phantoms. We also demonstrate improved feature visibility and spectral recovery at depth in phantoms and with in vivo measurements, suggesting our approach could in the future enable quantitative extraction of tissue absorption coefficients in biological tissue.
