Table of contents

A common feature of cellular telephony is the use of a 'hands-free' audio extension lead connected to a waist-worn handset. Interaction between the transmitting antenna, the wire and the user's body can occur, with detrimental effects including polar pattern degradation, reduced efficiency and localized increases in specific absorption rate (SAR). Using a realistic full-body model of an adult male, finite difference time domain analysis was employed to investigate the coupling between a hip-mounted 1.8 GHz handset fitted with a monopole antenna and a 1 m long wire representing a hands-free wire. Conduction current densities were computed for three identifiable coupling modes: magnetic-only, conductive-only and combined conductive-and-magnetic. Magnetic-only coupling was dominant. Without the lead, placing the handset at waist height led to a 42.8% increase in the total energy deposited in the body, compared to use at the head. Introducing the lead further increased the body loss, with a reduction in system radiation efficiency from 52% to 43.7%. Without the hands-free lead, the peak 1 g and 10 g SARs were 0.450 W kg⁻¹ and 0.265 W kg⁻¹, respectively, for 125 mW transmit power. With the hands-free lead connected, these values increased to 1.14 W kg⁻¹ and 0.430 W kg⁻¹, respectively.

Genetic absence epilepsy rats from Strasbourg (GAERS) are a strain of Wistar rats in which all animals present spontaneous occurrence of spike and wave discharges (SWD) in the cortical electroencephalogram (EEG). In this paper, we present a method for the detection of SWD, based on the key observation that SWD are quasi-periodic signals. A spectral-comb based analysis method is used to extract the fundamental frequency and the percentage of energy explained by the harmonic spectral components is subsequently used as a detection parameter. It is shown that a maximum sensitivity and specificity of up to 96 per cent can be achieved. We also compared the performance of this method with the methods presented in the literature and conclude that the surplus value of the novel detection method lies in the higher specificity that can be obtained in the analysis of long-term EEG fragments, which are contaminated by artefacts and contain large portions of slow-wave sleep.

A novel image-intensified charge-coupled device (ICCD) imaging system has been developed to perform 3D fluorescence tomographic imaging in the frequency-domain using near-infrared contrast agents. The imager is unique since it (i) employs a large tissue-mimicking phantom, which is shaped and sized to resemble a female breast and part of the extended chest-wall region, and (ii) enables rapid data acquisition in the frequency-domain by using a gain-modulated ICCD camera. Diffusion model predictions are compared to experimental measurements using two different referencing schemes under two different experimental conditions of perfect and imperfect uptake of fluorescent agent into a target. From these experimental measurements, three-dimensional images of fluorescent absorption were reconstructed using a computationally efficient variant of the approximate extended Kalman filter algorithm. The current work represents the first time that 3D fluorescence-enhanced optical tomographic reconstructions have been achieved from experimental measurements of the time-dependent light propagation on a clinically relevant breast-shaped tissue phantom using a gain-modulated ICCD camera.

Recent advances in physical models of skeletal dosimetry utilize high-resolution NMR microscopy images of trabecular bone. These images are coupled to radiation transport codes to assess energy deposition within active bone marrow irradiated by bone- or marrow-incorporated radionuclides. Recent studies have demonstrated that the rectangular shape of image voxels is responsible for cross-region (bone-to-marrow) absorbed fraction errors of up to 50% for very low-energy electrons (<50 keV). In this study, a new hyperboloid adaptation of the marching cube (MC) image-visualization algorithm is implemented within 3D digital images of trabecular bone to better define the bone–marrow interface, and thus reduce voxel effects in the assessment of cross-region absorbed fractions. To test the method, a mathematical sample of trabecular bone was constructed, composed of a random distribution of spherical marrow cavities, and subsequently coupled to the EGSnrc radiation code to generate reference values for the energy deposition in marrow or bone. Next, digital images of the bone model were constructed over a range of simulated image resolutions, and coupled to EGSnrc using the hyperboloid MC (HMC) algorithm. For the radionuclides ³³P, ^117mSn, ¹³¹I and ¹⁵³Sm, values of S_{(marrow←bone)} estimated using voxel models of trabecular bone were shown to have relative errors of 10%, 9%, <1% and <1% at a voxel size of 150 µm. At a voxel size of 60 µm, these errors were 6%, 5%, <1% and <1%, respectively. When the HMC model was applied during particle transport, the relative errors on S_{(marrow←bone)} for these same radionuclides were reduced to 7%, 6%, <1% and <1% at a voxel size of 150 µm, and to 2%, 2%, <1% and <1% at a voxel size of 60 µm. The technique was also applied to a real NMR image of human trabecular bone with a similar demonstration of reductions in dosimetry errors.

In dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) the photon attenuation is assumed to be similar in soft tissue overlying, adjacent to and inside the measured bone. In the calcaneal dual energy x-ray laser (DXL) technique, this assumption is not needed as attenuation by soft tissues at the local bone site is determined by combining DXA and heel thickness measurements. In the present study, 38 subjects were measured with DXL Calscan, Lunar PIXI and Lunar DPX-IQ DXA instruments and Hologic Sahara ultrasound instrument, and the performance and agreement of the instruments were analysed. Furthermore, numerical simulations on the effect of non-uniform fat-to-lean tissue ratio within soft tissue in heel were conducted. In vivo short-term precision (CV%, sCV%) of DXL Calscan (1.24%, 1.48%) was similar to that of Lunar PIXI (1.28%, 1.60%). Calcaneal areal bone mineral densities (BMD, g cm⁻²) measured using DXL Calscan and Lunar PIXI predicted equally well variations in BMD of femoral neck (r² = 0.63 and 0.52, respectively) or lumbar spine (r² = 0.61 and 0.64, respectively), determined with Lunar DPX-IQ. BMD values measured with DXL Calscan were, on average, 19% lower (p < 0.01) than those determined with Lunar PIXI. Interestingly, the difference in BMD values between instruments increased as a function of body mass index (BMI) (r² = 0.17, p < 0.02) or heel thickness (r² = 0.37, p < 0.01). Numerical simulations suggested that the spatial variation of soft tissue composition in heel can induce incontrollable inaccuracy in BMD when measured with the DXA technique. Theoretically, in contrast to DXA instruments, elimination of the effect of non-uniform soft tissue is possible with DXL Calscan.

The electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) alanine dosimetry system is based on EPR measurements of radicals formed in alanine by ionizing radiation. The system has been studied to determine its energy dependence for photons in the 10–30 MV region relative to those of ⁶⁰Co and to find out if the system would be suitable for dosimetry comparisons. The irradiations were carried out at the National Research Council, Ottawa, Canada and the doses ranged from 8 to 54 Gy. The EPR measurements were performed at the University of Oslo, Norway.

The ratio of the slope of the alanine reading versus dose-to-water curve for a certain linac photon beam quality and the corresponding slope for a reference ⁶⁰Co γ-radiation gives an experimental measure of the relative dose-to-water response of the EPR alanine dosimetry system. For calculating the linear regression coefficients of these alanine reading versus dose curves, the method of weighted least squares was used. This method is assumed to produce more accurate regression coefficients when applied to EPR dosimetry than the common method of standard least squares. The overall uncertainty on the ratio of slopes was between 0.5 and 0.6% for all three linac energies.

The relative response for all the linac beams compared to cobalt was less than unity: by about 0.5% for the 20 and 30 MV points but by more than 1% for the 10 MV point. The given standard uncertainties negate concluding that there is any significant internal variation in the measured response as a function of beam quality between the three linac energies. Thus, we calculated the average dose response for all three energies and found that the alanine response is 0.8% (±0.5%) lower for high energy x-rays than for ⁶⁰Co γ-rays. This result indicates a small energy dependence in the alanine response for the high-energy photons relative to ⁶⁰Co which may be significant. This result is specific to our dosimetry system (alanine with 20% polyethylene binder pressed into a particular shape) including its waterproofing sleeve of PMMA (2 mm thick); however, we expect that this result may apply to other similar detectors.

Respiration-induced tumour motion can potentially compromise the use of intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) as a dose escalation tool for lung tumour treatment. We have experimentally investigated the intra-fractional organ motion effects in lung IMRT treatments delivered by multi-leaf collimator (MLC). An in-house made motor-driven platform, which moves sinusoidally with an amplitude of 1 cm and a period of 4 s, was used to mimic tumour motion. Tumour motion was simulated along cranial-caudal direction while MLC leaves moved across the patient from left to right, as in most clinical cases. The dose to a point near the centre of the tumour mass was measured according to geometric and dosimetric parameters from two five-field lung IMRT plans. For each field, measurement was done for two dose rates (300 and 500 MU min⁻¹), three MLC delivery modes (sliding window, step-and-shoot with 10 and 20 intensity levels) and eight equally spaced starting phases of tumour motion. The dose to the measurement point delivered from all five fields was derived for both a single fraction and 30 fractions by randomly sampling from measured dose values of each field at different initial phases. It was found that the mean dose to a moving tumour differs slightly (<2–3%) from that to a static tumour. The variation in breathing phase at the start of dose delivery results in a maximum variation around the mean dose of greater than 30% for one field. The full width at half maximum for the probability distribution of the point dose is up to 8% for all five fields in a single fraction, but less than 1–2% after 30 fractions. In general, lower dose rate can reduce the motion-caused dose variation and therefore might be preferable for lung IMRT when no motion mitigation techniques are used. From the two IMRT cases we studied where tumour motion is perpendicular to MLC leaf motion, the dose variation was found to be insensitive to the MLC delivery mode.

We present a method to model the virtual wedge shape in a 3D treatment planning system as a physical wedge. The virtual wedge shape was determined using the measured dose profile of the virtual wedge at a chosen reference depth. The differences between the calculated and the measured dose profiles for the virtual wedge were within 0.5% at the reference depth, and within 2.5% at other depths. This method provides a fast and accurate way to implement the virtual wedge into our planning system for any wedge angles. This method is also applicable to model the physical wedge shapes with comparable good results.

Intensity-modulated (IM) beam profiles computed by inverse-planning systems tend to be complex and may have multiple spatial minima and maxima. In addition to the structure originating from the treatment objectives, beam profiles might contain stochastic structure or noise and numerical artefacts, which present certain practical difficulties. The combinational use of conformal and intensity-modulated beams could be a different method of making the total fluence distribution less noisy and deliverable without compromising the advantages of IMRT. The investigation of this possibility provided the basis for this paper. A treatment-planning study was performed to compare plans combining modulated and unmodulated beams with a 5-field, equally spaced, full IMRT plan for treating the prostate and seminal vesicles in three patients. Beam angles for this study were 0°, 72°, 144°, 216° and 288°. Additionally, a study was performed on a patient with a different beam arrangement (36°, 108°, 180°, 252°, 324°) from the first study to test the obtained results. This study has demonstrated that it is possible to substitute up to two conformal beams in the originally full IMRT plan when carefully selecting the conformal beam angles. Making the anterior beam (0°) and an anterior oblique beam (between 0° and 90°) conformal leads to a reduction in the total number of monitor units and segments of about 15% and 39%, respectively. Additionally, these two open fields can be used for simpler treatment verification.

Our aim in this work was to investigate the methodology used in the determination of the entrance surface dose (ESD) in diagnostic radiology. In kV x-rays for low-energy photons (tube potential up to 160 kV, HVL: 1–8 mm Al), the ESD is based on the use of the ratio of mass-energy absorption coefficients and backscatter factors. A full simulation of the photon and electron transport in a kilovoltage x-ray unit, using the Monte Carlo code BEAM/EGS4, was performed to obtain an accurate beam phase space for use in dose calculation. The modelled phase space was experimentally validated for the beam qualities (measured HVL: 3.3 mm Al–2.2 mm Cu) and showed good agreement between calculated and measured HVLs, air kerma and relative dose distributions. We have computed the conversion factors from air kerma to water or soft tissue absorbed dose at the surface of a phantom for beam qualities (HVL: 3.3–8.35 mm Al). The same model was also used to calculate the ESD in water and in soft tissue for the low-energy photon range considered. The results show that the numerical differences between the air kerma and the water kerma based backscatter factors are insignificant. The same conclusion was reached for the (μ_en/ρ) ratios, for soft tissue to air, evaluated using either the primary photon spectra or the spectra at the surface of a phantom. Furthermore, the good agreement obtained for the computation of the conversion factors with a full BEAM/EGS4 model confirms the previous studies which are based on different sources for the spectral distribution and different beam geometries (pencil beam or point source assumptions). On the other hand, the ESD in water or soft tissue is well described either with the B_air or the B_w formalism. Conversion factors from air kerma to ESD in these media are proposed in this work for several beam qualities in diagnostic radiology.

A geometric solution of the problem of optimal orientation of beams in conformal external radiotherapy is presented. The method uses geometric derived quantities which consider the intersection volume between organs at risk (OAR) and the beam shape. In comparison to previous geometric methods a true 3D volume computation is used which takes into account beam divergence, concave shapes, as well as treatment settings such as individual beam shaping by blocks or multi-leaf collimators.

For standard dosimetric cost functions used by dose optimization algorithms a corresponding set of geometric objective functions is proposed.

We compare the correlations between geometric and dosimetric cost functions for two clinical cases, a prostate and a head tumour case. A correlation is observed for the prostate case, whereas for the head case it is less pronounced due to the larger part of overlapping volumes between the beams which cannot be considered by the used objectives. In comparison to not-optimized beam directions the dose distribution is significantly better for the beam directions found by the optimization of a geometric multi-objective cost function.

An optimal dose distribution can easily be achieved using the geometric model. This is shown by comparing for the two cases the dose–volume histograms (DVH) of manually optimized plans by experienced planners and the DVHs of the geometrically found optimal solutions. In comparison to the manually optimized plans the solutions found by the geometric method significantly reduce the average dose in the OARs and NT, while maintaining the same PTV coverage.

The optimization requires only a few seconds and could be used to improve the performance of inverse planning algorithms in radiotherapy for the determination of the optimal direction of beams.

In stereotactic radiosurgery, a narrow beam penumbra is often desired for producing steep dose fall-off between the target volume and adjacent critical structures. Due to limited source sizes and the scattering effects, the physical penumbra of the Gamma Knife (GK) is often restricted to a width of 1–2 mm. In this work, we developed a technique to further reduce the beam penumbra and improve the dose profile for the Gamma Knife delivery. Under this technique, a conic filter is inserted into an individual plug collimator of a GK helmet to flatten the beam profile. Monte Carlo calculations were carried out to simulate the GK geometry of the individual plug collimator and to optimize the physical shapes of the filters. The calculations were performed for a series of filter shapes with different collimator sizes. Our results show that a proper filter significantly reduces the single GK beam penumbra width (defined as the distance from the 90% to 50% isodose lines) by 30–60%. The beam intensity is reduced by about 20–50% when the filter is used. A treatment plan was developed for a trigeminal neuralgia case by commissioning the filtered beam profile for Leksell Gamma Plan (version 5.31). Compared with the conventional treatment plan, a significant improvement was found on the critical structure sparing and on the target dose uniformity. In conclusion, the proposed technique is feasible and effective in sharpening the beam penumbra for Gamma Knife beam profiles.

The feasibility of electron capture (EC) radionuclides as an alternative to the β and high-energy γ emitters presently in use for intravascular brachytherapy is investigated. A potential advantage of the low-energy x-ray radiation from EC isotopes may be an enhanced biological effectiveness with respect to the presently applied β nuclides, but at the same time avoiding the shielding problems induced by the large penetrability of high-energy γ rays. A survey considering the most important practical aspects such as dose delivery to the vessel walls in reasonable time spans, absorption properties, possible production of sources with the required specific activities and radiation safety reveals ⁷¹Ge as the most promising candidate.

This note describes a fast dose calculation method that can be used to speed up the optimization process in intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT). Most iterative optimization algorithms in IMRT require a large number of dose calculations to achieve convergence and therefore the total amount of time needed for the IMRT planning can be substantially reduced by using a faster dose calculation method. The method that is described in this note relies on an accurate dose calculation engine that is used to calculate an approximate dose kernel for each beam used in the treatment plan. Once the kernel is computed and saved, subsequent dose calculations can be done rapidly by looking up this kernel. Inaccuracies due to the approximate nature of the kernel in this method can be reduced by performing scheduled kernel updates. This fast dose calculation method can be performed more than two orders of magnitude faster than the typical superposition/convolution methods and therefore is suitable for applications in which speed is critical, e.g., in an IMRT optimization that requires a simulated annealing optimization algorithm or in a practical IMRT beam-angle optimization system.

Instead of performing a numerical deconvolution, we propose to use a linear piecewise-continuous model of the renal impulse response function for parametric fitting of renal scintigraphy data, to obtain clinically useful renal parameters. The strengths of the present model are its simplicity and speed of computation, while not compromising on accuracy. Preliminary patient case studies show that the estimated parameters are in good agreement with a more elaborate model.

We present the first images of beta autoradiography obtained with the high-resolution hybrid pixel detector consisting of the Medipix2 single photon counting read-out chip bump-bonded to a 300 µm thick silicon pixel detector. This room temperature system has 256 × 256 square pixels of 55 µm pitch (total sensitive area of 14 × 14 mm²), with a double threshold discriminator and a 13-bit counter in each pixel. It is read out via a dedicated electronic interface and control software, also developed in the framework of the European Medipix2 Collaboration. Digital beta autoradiograms of ¹⁴C microscale standard strips (containing separate bands of increasing specific activity in the range 0.0038–32.9 kBq g⁻¹) indicate system linearity down to a total background noise of 1.8 × 10⁻³ counts mm⁻² s⁻¹. The minimum detectable activity is estimated to be 0.012 Bq for 36 000 s exposure and 0.023 Bq for 10 800 s exposure. The measured minimum detection threshold is less than 1600 electrons (equivalent to about 6 keV Si). This real-time system for beta autoradiography offers lower pixel pitch and higher sensitive area than the previous Medipix1-based system. It has a ¹⁴C sensitivity better than that of micro channel plate based systems, which, however, shows higher spatial resolution and sensitive area.

This letter is in full in the PDF file below.

This letter is in full in the PDF file below.