Angular correction methodology and characterization of a high-resolution CMOS array for patient specific quality assurance on a robotic arm linac.

PURPOSE: To develop an angular correction methodology and characterize a high-resolution complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) array for patient specific quality assurance on a robotic arm linear accelerator. METHODS: Beam path files from the treatment planning software (TPS) were used to calculate the angle of radiation beam with respect to the detector plane. Beams from multiple discrete angles were delivered to the CMOS detector array and an angular dependency look up table (LUT) was created. The LUT was then used to correct for the angular dependency of the detector. An iso-centric 5 mm fixed cone, non iso-centric multi-target fixed cone, 10 mm Iris and a multi-leaf collimator (MLC) based collimated plan were delivered to the phantom and compared to the TPS with and without angular correction applied. Additionally, the CMOS array was compared to gafchromic film and a diode array. RESULTS: Large errors of up to 30% were observed for oblique angles. When angular correction was applied, the gamma passing rate increased from 99.2% to 100% (average gamma value decreased from 0.29 to 0.14) for the 5-mm iso-centric cone plan. Similarly, the passing rate increased from 84.0% to 100% for the Iris plan and from 49.98% to 98.4% for the MLC plan when angular correction was applied. For the multi-target plan, applying angular correction improved the gamma passing rate from 94% to 99.6%. The 5 mm iso-centric fixed cone plan was also delivered to film, and the gamma passing rate was 91.3% when using gafchromic film as the reference dataset, whereas the diode array provided insufficient sampling for this plan. CONCLUSION: A methodology of calculating the beam angle based on the beam path files was developed and validated. The array was demonstrated to be superior to other quality assurance tools because of its sub-millimeter spatial resolution and immediate read out of the results.

Assessment of Geant4 Prompt-Gamma Emission Yields in the Context of Proton Therapy Monitoring.

Monte Carlo tools have been long used to assist the research and development of solutions for proton therapy monitoring. The present work focuses on the prompt-gamma emission yields by comparing experimental data with the outcomes of the current version of Geant4 using all applicable proton inelastic models. For the case in study and using the binary cascade model, it was found that Geant4 overestimates the prompt-gamma emission yields by 40.2 ± 0.3%, even though it predicts the prompt-gamma profile length of the experimental profile accurately. In addition, the default implementations of all proton inelastic models show an overestimation in the number of prompt gammas emitted. Finally, a set of built-in options and physically sound Geant4 source code changes have been tested in order to try to improve the discrepancy observed. A satisfactory agreement was found when using the QMD model with a wave packet width equal to 1.3 fm(2).

Probabilistic models and numerical calculation of system matrix and sensitivity in list-mode MLEM 3D reconstruction of Compton camera images.

This paper addresses the problem of evaluating the system matrix and the sensitivity for iterative reconstruction in Compton camera imaging. Proposed models and numerical calculation strategies are compared through the influence they have on the three-dimensional reconstructed images. The study attempts to address four questions. First, it proposes an analytic model for the system matrix. Second, it suggests a method for its numerical validation with Monte Carlo simulated data. Third, it compares analytical models of the sensitivity factors with Monte Carlo simulated values. Finally, it shows how the system matrix and the sensitivity calculation strategies influence the quality of the reconstructed images.