Dosimetric impact of hollow intraoral stents for head and neck cancer radiotherapy: A phantom study.

PURPOSE: To investigate the dosimetric impact of the calculation boundaries and dose calculation algorithms of radiotherapy in head and neck cancer patients with an opened oral cavity connected to the exterior by a hollow intraoral positioning stent. METHODS AND MATERIALS: A homemade silicone phantom with an opened oral cavity was placed in a CIRS head phantom to model head and neck cancer patients with a hollow intraoral positioning stent. 3D-CRT plans were designed on CT images of the phantom in Monaco and Pinnacle3 treatment planning systems (TPSs) with the same beam parameters. The default boundary and manually extrapolated boundary were both adopted in these two TPSs to explore the dosimetric impact on treatment plans. The nanoDot™ optically stimulated luminescence dosimeters (OSLDs) were chosen to measure the planned dose surrounding the oral cavity of the head phantom after calibration. RESULT: The doses in the air cavity and two measuring points at the joint area were dramatically changed from 0.0, 92.4 and 148.8 cGy to 177.8, 244.2 and 244.1 cGy in Monaco after adopting the extrapolated boundary. While the calculated doses at the same place were changed from 61.2, 143.7 and 198.3 cGy to 175.4, 234.7 and 233.2 cGy in Pinnacle3 with a similar calculation boundary. For the Monaco TPS, the relative errors compared to the OSLD measured doses were 2.94 ± 1.93%, 0.53 ± 8.64%, 2.65 ± 1.87% and 3.93 ± 1.69% at 4 measuring positions. In contrast, the relative errors 4.03 ± 1.93%, 4.85 ± 8.64%, 7.61 ± 1.87% and 5.61 ± 1.69% were observed in Pinnacle3 . CONCLUSION: The boundary setting of an opened oral cavity in TPSs has a significant dosimetric impact on head and neck cancer radiotherapy. An extrapolated boundary should be manually set up to include the whole oral cavity in the dose calculation domain to avoid major dose deviations.

A new method for measuring magnetorheological fluid redispersibility by testing yield stresses of sediments at different depths.

Magnetorheological fluid (MRF) is a widely used smart material that suffers from sedimentation. Since sedimentation is unavoidable, it is crucial to study and improve the redispersibility of MRFs. However, previous redispersibility testing methods have problems, such as complicated operation and low precision. Simultaneously, a simple and effective method is urgently needed for high-precision modeling of MRF sedimentation to test the rheological properties of settled MRFs at different depths. After systematically analyzing the redispersion problem, this paper proposes decoupling the energy required for redispersing settled MRFs into two parts, which are related to different factors. These two parts are the energy required to separate the agglomerated particles (related to the MRF formula) and that to redisperse the settled MRF uniformly vertically against gravity (related to the solid concentration and packing limit). The energy that separates the agglomerated particles is proportional to the shear stress of slowly shearing the corresponding agglomerated samples, i.e., the yield stress. Thus, this paper proposes a simple microdamage quasi-static indentation method to measure the yield stresses of settled MRFs at different depths to characterize the redispersibility of the corresponding MRFs. Herein, this method is applied to study the mechanisms of the influences of surfactants, thixotropic agents, and their networks on the redispersibility of MRFs. The results indicate that a well-dispersed plate-like thixotropic agent network can effectively improve redispersibility, while surfactants with poor compatibility degrade redispersibility. In summary, this redispersibility test method will greatly facilitate studies of MRFs, such as optimizing the formulas and establishing sedimentation models.

The association between methionine synthase A2756G polymorphism and hematological cancer: A meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Numerous studies have focused on the association of methionine synthase (MS) A2756G polymorphism and acute hematological cancer risk. However, the results remain inconsistent. Therefore, a meta-analysis was performed to derive a more precise estimate of the association between them. METHODS: This meta-analysis involved 25 articles (26 studies) including 8641 hematological cancer patients and 15,498 controls. The pooled odds ratios (ORs) and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of the association between MS A2756G polymorphism and the risk of hematological cancer were calculated. RESULTS: Overall, no significant increased risks were found between MS A2756G polymorphism and hematological cancer risk under allelic homozygote (GA vs AA: OR = 0.98, 95% CI = 0.89-1.07, P = .62), heterozygote (GG vs AA: OR = 0.99, 95% CI = 0.85-1.15, P = .91), dominant (AG+GG vs AA: OR = 0.99, 95% CI = 0.90-1.08, P = .93), and recessive (GG vs AG+AA: OR = 1.00, 95% CI = 0.86-1.16, P = .97) models, respectively. In the stratified analyses by ethnicity and source of controls, there were still no significant associations between them in all genetic models. CONCLUSIONS: Therefore, these findings demonstrate that MS A2756G polymorphism may not be a risk factor for hematological cancer.

[Application of Imaging-Guided Radiation Therapy in Pelvic Tumor Radiotherapy].

OBJECTIVE: To discuss the influence of setup errors on the accuracy of pelvic cancer in IGRT, analysis setup errors and determine the CTV-to-PTV margins. METHODS: 60 pelvic cancer patients treated with Varian 23IX, all of them were performed by CBCT before and after-correction three times in the first week and after that once a week. Then, to measure the setup errors at X(left-right), Y(superior-inferior), Z(anterior-posterior) axis and E(coronal), F(sagittal), G(axial) rotation directions. RESULTS: 530 scans obtained in all, the setup errors in X, Y, Z, E, F, G were (-0.52 ± 4.18) mm, (0.73 ± 4.86) mm, (-0.36 ± 3.62) mm, (0.14 ± 1.20)degrees, (0.13 ± 1.34)degrees, (0.21 ± 1.73)degrees respectively and were much lower after correction at X, Y, Z axis, besides, CTV-to-PTV margins decrease a lot. CONCLUSION: The accuracy of radiotherapy can be highly increased with the use of IGRT in pelvic cancer.

[Mutation detection of COL1A1 gene in a pedigree with osteogenesis imperfecta].

Osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) is heritable bone fragility,which is inherited as an autosomal dominant trait clinical presentation. Clinical symptom, in general, is dominantly inherited OI with blue sclerae, hearing loss and mild-moderate skeletal deformity. Genetic loci of OI have been mapped to17q21.31-q22 and 7q22.1, in which COL1A1 and COL1A2 are known to be the causal genes. In this work,we performed linkage analysis in a kindred with autosomal dominant hereditary OI. A tight linkage to the markers on chromosome 17q21.31-q22 (maximum two-point lod score: 9.31 at theta = .00) was observed. Sequence analysis of COL1A1 revealed a single-base mutation that converted the consensus sequence at the 5' end of intron 26 from GT to AT to form an abnormal splicing site leading to OI.