Investigations into the feasibility of optical-CT 3D dosimetry with minimal use of refractively matched fluids.

PURPOSE: In optical-CT, the use of a refractively matched polyurethane solid-tank in place of a fluid bath has the potential to greatly increase practical convenience, reduce cost, and possibly improve the efficacy of flood corrections. This work investigates the feasibility of solid-tank optical-CT imaging for 3D dosimetry through computer simulation. METHODS: A matlab ray-tracing simulation platform, ScanSim, was used to model a parallel-source telecentric optical-CT imaging system through a polyurethane solid-tank containing a central cylindrical hollow into which PRESAGE radiochromic dosimeters can be placed. A small amount of fluid fills the 1-5 mm gap between the dosimeter and the walls of the tank. The use of the solid-tank reduces the required amount of fluid by approximately 97%. To characterize the efficacy of solid-tank, optical-CT scanning simulations investigated sensitivity to refractive index (RI) mismatches between dosimeter, solid-tank, and fluid, for a variety of dosimeter (RI = 1.5-1.47) and fluid (RI = 1.55-1.0) combinations. Efficacy was evaluated through the usable radius (ru) metric, defined as the fraction of the radius of the dosimeter where measured dose is predicted to be within 2% of the ground truth entered into the simulation. Additional simulations examined the effect of increasing gap size (1-5 mm) between the dosimeter and solid-tank well. The effects of changing the lens tolerance (0.5°-5.0°) were also investigated. RESULTS: As the RI mismatch between the dosimeter and solid-tank increased from 0 to 0.02, the usable radius decreased from 97.6% to 50.2%. The optimal fluid RI decreased nonlinearly from 1.5 to 1.34 as the mismatch increased and was up to 9% lower than the tank. Media mismatches between the dosimeter and solid-tank also exacerbate the effects of changing the gap size, with no easily quantifiable relationship with usable radius. Generally, the optimal fluid RI value increases as gap size increases and is closely matched to the dosimeter at large gap sizes (> 3 mm). Increasing the telecentric lens tolerance increases the usable radius for all refractive media combinations and improves the maximum usable radius of mismatched media to that of perfectly matched media for tolerances > 5.0°. The maximum usable radius can be improved up to a factor of 2 when lens tolerances are small (< 1.0°). CONCLUSIONS: Dry solid-tank optical-CT imaging in a telecentric system is feasible if the dosimeter RI is a close match with the solid-tank (< 0.01 difference), providing accurate dose measurements within ± 2% of true dose to over 80% of the dosimeter volume. In order to achieve accurate measurements over 96% of the dosimeter volume (representing out to 2 mm from the dosimeter edge), the dosimeter-tank RI mismatch must be less than 0.005. Optimal results occur when the RI of the dosimeter and tank is the same, in which case the fluid will have the same RI. If mismatches between the tank and dosimeter RI occur, the RI of the matching fluid needs to be fine tuned to achieve the highest usable radius.

On the feasibility of polyurethane based 3D dosimeters with optical CT for dosimetric verification of low energy photon brachytherapy seeds.

PURPOSE: To investigate the feasibility of and challenges yet to be addressed to measure dose from low energy (effective energy <50 keV) brachytherapy sources (Pd-103, Cs-131, and I-125) using polyurethane based 3D dosimeters with optical CT. METHODS: The authors' evaluation used the following sources: models 200 (Pd-103), CS-1 Rev2 (Cs-131), and 6711 (I-125). The authors used the Monte Carlo radiation transport code MCNP5, simulations with the ScanSim optical tomography simulation software, and experimental measurements with PRESAGE(®) dosimeters/optical CT to investigate the following: (1) the water equivalency of conventional (density = 1.065 g/cm(3)) and deformable (density = 1.02 g/cm(3)) formulations of polyurethane dosimeters, (2) the scatter conditions necessary to achieve accurate dosimetry for low energy photon seeds, (3) the change in photon energy spectrum within the dosimeter as a function of distance from the source in order to determine potential energy sensitivity effects, (4) the optimal delivered dose to balance optical transmission (per projection) with signal to noise ratio in the reconstructed dose distribution, and (5) the magnitude and characteristics of artifacts due to the presence of a channel in the dosimeter. Monte Carlo simulations were performed using both conventional and deformable dosimeter formulations. For verification, 2.8 Gy at 1 cm was delivered in 92 h using an I-125 source to a PRESAGE(®) dosimeter with conventional formulation and a central channel with 0.0425 cm radius for source placement. The dose distribution was reconstructed with 0.02 and 0.04 cm(3) voxel size using the Duke midsized optical CT scanner (DMOS). RESULTS: While the conventional formulation overattenuates dose from all three sources compared to water, the current deformable formulation has nearly water equivalent attenuation properties for Cs-131 and I-125, while underattenuating for Pd-103. The energy spectrum of each source is relatively stable within the first 5 cm especially for I-125. The inherent assumption of radial symmetry in the TG43 geometry leads to a linear increase in sample points within the 3D dosimeter as a function of distance away from the source, which partially offsets the decreasing signal. Simulations of dose reconstruction using optical CT showed the feasibility of reconstructing dose out to a radius of 10 cm without saturating projection images using an optimal dose and high dynamic range scanning; the simulations also predicted that reconstruction artifacts at the channel surface due to a small discrepancy in refractive index should be negligible. Agreement of the measured with calculated radial dose function for I-125 was within 5% between 0.3 and 2.5 cm from the source, and the median difference of measured from calculated anisotropy function was within 5% between 0.3 and 2.0 cm from the source. CONCLUSIONS: 3D dosimetry using polyurethane dosimeters with optical CT looks to be a promising application to verify dosimetric distributions surrounding low energy brachytherapy sources.