| 1. |
- Andersson, Martin, et al.
(författare)
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A biokinetic and dosimetric model for ionic indium in humans
- 2017
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Ingår i: Physics in Medicine and Biology. - : IOP Publishing. - 0031-9155 .- 1361-6560. ; 62:16, s. 6397-6407
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper reviews biokinetic data for ionic indium, and proposes a biokinetic model for systemic indium in adult humans. The development of parameter values focuses on human data and indium in the form of ionic indium(III), as indium chloride and indium arsenide. The model presented for systemic indium is defined by five different pools: plasma, bone marrow, liver, kidneys and other soft tissues. The model is based on two subsystems: one corresponding to indium bound to transferrin and one where indium is transported back to the plasma, binds to red blood cell transferrin and is then excreted through the kidneys to the urinary bladder. Absorbed doses to several organs and the effective dose are calculated for 111In- and 113mIn-ions. The proposed biokinetic model is compared with previously published biokinetic indium models published by the ICRP. The absorbed doses are calculated using the ICRP/ICRU adult reference phantoms and the effective dose is estimated according to ICRP Publication 103. The effective doses for 111In and 113mIn are 0.25 mSv MBq-1 and 0.013 mSv MBq-1 respectively. The updated biokinetic and dosimetric models presented in this paper take into account human data and new animal data, which represent more detailed and presumably more accurate dosimetric data than that underlying previous models for indium.
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| 2. |
- Speight, Richard, et al.
(författare)
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IPEM Topical Report : an international IPEM survey of MRI use for external beam radiotherapy treatment planning
- 2021
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Ingår i: Physics in Medicine and Biology. - : Institute of Physics (IOP). - 0031-9155 .- 1361-6560. ; 66:7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Introduction/Background: Despite growing interest in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), integration in external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) treatment planning uptake varies globally. In order to understand the current international landscape of MRI in EBRT a survey has been performed in 11 countries. This work reports on differences and common themes identified.Methods: A multi-disciplinary Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine working party modified a survey previously used in the UK to understand current practice using MRI for EBRT treatment planning, investigate how MRI is currently used and managed as well as identify knowledge gaps. It was distributed electronically within 11 countries: Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, the UK and the USA.Results: The survey response rate within the USA was <1% and hence these results omitted from the analysis. In the other 10 countries the survey had a median response rate of 77% per country. Direct MRI access, defined as either having a dedicated MRI scanner for radiotherapy (RT) or access to a radiology MRI scanner, varied between countries. France, Italy and the UK reported the lowest direct MRI access rates and all other countries reported direct access in ≥82% of centres. Whilst ≥83% of centres in Denmark and Sweden reported having dedicated MRI scanners for EBRT, all other countries reported ≤29%. Anatomical sites receiving MRI for EBRT varied between countries with brain, prostate, head and neck being most common. Commissioning and QA of image registration and MRI scanners varied greatly, as did MRI sequences performed, staffing models and training given to different staff groups. The lack of financial reimbursement for MR was a consistent barrier for MRI implementation for RT for all countries and MR access was a reported important barrier for all countries except Sweden and Denmark.Conclusion: No country has a comprehensive approach for MR in EBRT adoption and financial barriers are present worldwide. Variations between countries in practice, equipment, staffing models, training, QA and MRI sequences have been identified, and are likely to be due to differences in funding as well as a lack of consensus or guidelines in the literature. Access to dedicated MR for EBRT is limited in all but Sweden and Denmark, but in all countries there are financial challenges with ongoing per patient costs. Despite these challenges, significant interest exists in increasing MR guided EBRT planning over the next 5 years.
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| 3. |
- Fetty, Lukas, et al.
(författare)
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Investigating conditional GAN performance with different generator architectures, an ensemble model, and different MR scanners for MR-sCT conversion
- 2020
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Ingår i: Physics in Medicine and Biology. - : Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP). - 0031-9155 .- 1361-6560. ; 65:10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent developments in magnetic resonance (MR) to synthetic computed tomography (sCT) conversion have shown that treatment planning is possible without an initial planning CT. Promising conversion results have been demonstrated recently using conditional generative adversarial networks (cGANs). However, the performance is generally only tested on images from one MR scanner, which neglects the potential of neural networks to find general high-level abstract features. In this study, we explored the generalizability of the generator models, trained on a single field strength scanner, to data acquired with higher field strengths. T2-weighted 0.35T MRIs and CTs from 51 patients treated for prostate (40) and cervical cancer (11) were included. 25 of them were used to train four different generators (SE-ResNet, DenseNet, U-Net, and Embedded Net). Further, an ensemble model was created from the four network outputs. The models were validated on 16 patients from a 0.35T MR scanner. Further, the trained models were tested on the Gold Atlas dataset, containing T2-weighted MR scans of different field strengths; 1.5T(7) and 3T(12), and 10 patients from the 0.35T scanner. The sCTs were dosimetrically compared using clinical VMAT plans for all test patients. For the same scanner (0.35T), the results from the different models were comparable on the test set, with only minor differences in the mean absolute error (MAE) (35-51HU body). Similar results were obtained for conversions of 3T GE Signa and the 3T GE Discovery images (40-62HU MAE) for three of the models. However, larger differences were observed for the 1.5T images (48-65HU MAE). The overall best model was found to be the ensemble model. All dose differences were below 1%. This study shows that it is possible to generalize models trained on images of one scanner to other scanners and different field strengths. The best metric results were achieved by the combination of all networks.
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| 4. |
- Garpebring, Anders, et al.
(författare)
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Density Estimation of Grey-Level Co-Occurrence Matrices for Image Texture Analysis
- 2018
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Ingår i: Physics in Medicine and Biology. - : Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. - 0031-9155 .- 1361-6560. ; 63:19, s. 9-15
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Haralick texture features are common in the image analysis literature, partly because of their simplicity and because their values can be interpreted. It was recently observed that the Haralick texture features are very sensitive to the size of the GLCM that was used to compute them, which led to a new formulation that is invariant to the GLCM size. However, these new features still depend on the sample size used to compute the GLCM, i.e. the size of the input image region-of-interest (ROI).The purpose of this work was to investigate the performance of density estimation methods for approximating the GLCM and subsequently the corresponding invariant features.Three density estimation methods were evaluated, namely a piece-wise constant distribution, the Parzen-windows method, and the Gaussian mixture model. The methods were evaluated on 29 different image textures and 20 invariant Haralick texture features as well as a wide range of different ROI sizes.The results indicate that there are two types of features: those that have a clear minimum error for a particular GLCM size for each ROI size, and those whose error decreases monotonically with increased GLCM size. For the first type of features, the Gaussian mixture model gave the smallest errors, and in particular for small ROI sizes (less than about 20×20).In conclusion, the Gaussian mixture model is the preferred method for the first type of features (in particular for small ROIs). For the second type of features, simply using a large GLCM size is preferred.
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| 5. |
- Jonasson, Lars, 1983-, et al.
(författare)
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Simulating effects of brain atrophy in longitudinal PET imaging with an anthropomorphic brain phantom
- 2017
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Ingår i: Physics in Medicine and Biology. - : Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP). - 0031-9155 .- 1361-6560. ; 62:13, s. 5213-5227
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In longitudinal positron emission tomography (PET), the presence of volumetric changes over time can lead to an overestimation or underestimation of the true changes in the quantified PET signal due to the partial volume effect (PVE) introduced by the limited spatial resolution of existing PET cameras and reconstruction algorithms. Here, a 3D-printed anthropomorphic brain phantom with attachable striata in three sizes was designed to enable controlled volumetric changes. Using a method to eliminate the non-radioactive plastic wall, and manipulating BP levels by adding different number of events from list-mode acquisitions, we investigated the artificial volume dependence of BP due to PVE, and potential bias arising from varying BP. Comparing multiple reconstruction algorithms we found that a high-resolution ordered- subsets maximization algorithm with spatially variant point-spread function resolution modeling provided the most accurate data. For striatum, the BP changed by 0.08% for every 1% volume change, but for smaller volumes such as the posterior caudate the artificial change in BP was as high as 0.7% per 1% volume change. A simple gross correction for striatal volume is unsatisfactory, as the amplitude of the PVE on the BP differs depending on where in the striatum the change occurred. Therefore, to correctly interpret age-related longitudinal changes in the BP, we must account for volumetric changes also within a structure, rather than across the whole volume. The present 3D-printing technology, combined with the wall removal method, can be implemented to gain knowledge about the predictable bias introduced by the PVE differences in uptake regions of varying shape.
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| 6. |
- Kaushik, Sandeep S., et al.
(författare)
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Region of interest focused MRI to synthetic CT translation using regression and segmentation multi-task network
- 2023
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Ingår i: Physics in Medicine and Biology. - : Institute of Physics (IOP). - 0031-9155 .- 1361-6560. ; 68:19
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective: In MR-only clinical workflow, replacing CT with MR image is of advantage for workflow efficiency and reduces radiation to the patient. An important step required to eliminate CT scan from the workflow is to generate the information provided by CT via an MR image. In this work, we aim to demonstrate a method to generate accurate synthetic CT (sCT) from an MR image to suit the radiation therapy (RT) treatment planning workflow. We show the feasibility of the method and make way for a broader clinical evaluation.Approach: We present a machine learning method for sCT generation from zero-echo-time (ZTE) MRI aimed at structural and quantitative accuracies of the image, with a particular focus on the accurate bone density value prediction. The misestimation of bone density in the radiation path could lead to unintended dose delivery to the target volume and results in suboptimal treatment outcome. We propose a loss function that favors a spatially sparse bone region in the image. We harness the ability of the multi-task network to produce correlated outputs as a framework to enable localization of region of interest (RoI) via segmentation, emphasize regression of values within RoI and still retain the overall accuracy via global regression. The network is optimized by a composite loss function that combines a dedicated loss from each task.Main results: We have included 54 brain patient images in this study and tested the sCT images against reference CT on a subset of 20 cases. A pilot dose evaluation was performed on 9 of the 20 test cases to demonstrate the viability of the generated sCT in RT planning. The average quantitative metrics produced by the proposed method over the test set were-(a) mean absolute error (MAE) of 70 ± 8.6 HU; (b) peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of 29.4 ± 2.8 dB; structural similarity metric (SSIM) of 0.95 ± 0.02; and (d) Dice coefficient of the body region of 0.984 ± 0.Significance: We demonstrate that the proposed method generates sCT images that resemble visual characteristics of a real CT image and has a quantitative accuracy that suits RT dose planning application. We compare the dose calculation from the proposed sCT and the real CT in a radiation therapy treatment planning setup and show that sCT based planning falls within 0.5% target dose error. The method presented here with an initial dose evaluation makes an encouraging precursor to a broader clinical evaluation of sCT based RT planning on different anatomical regions.
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| 7. |
- Kuess, Peter, et al.
(författare)
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Association between pathology and texture features of multi parametric MRI of the prostate
- 2017
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Ingår i: Physics in Medicine and Biology. - : IOP Publishing. - 0031-9155 .- 1361-6560. ; 62:19, s. 7833-7854
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The role of multi-parametric (mp)MRI in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer has increased considerably. An alternative to visual inspection of mpMRI is the evaluation using histogram-based (first order statistics) parameters and textural features (second order statistics). The aims of the present work were to investigate the relationship between benign and malignant sub-volumes of the prostate and textures obtained from mpMR images. The performance of tumor prediction was investigated based on the combination of histogram-based and textural parameters. Subsequently, the relative importance of mpMR images was assessed and the benefit of additional imaging analyzed. Finally, sub-structures based on the PI-RADS classification were investigated as potential regions to automatically detect maligned lesions. Twenty-five patients who received mpMRI prior to radical prostatectomy were included in the study. The imaging protocol included T2, DWI, and DCE. Delineation of tumor regions was performed based on pathological information. First and second order statistics were derived from each structure and for all image modalities. The resulting data were processed with multivariate analysis, using PCA (principal component analysis) and OPLS-DA (orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis) for separation of malignant and healthy tissue. PCA showed a clear difference between tumor and healthy regions in the peripheral zone for all investigated images. The predictive ability of the OPLS-DA models increased for all image modalities when first and second order statistics were combined. The predictive value reached a plateau after adding ADC and T2, and did not increase further with the addition of other image information. The present study indicates a distinct difference in the signatures between malign and benign prostate tissue. This is an absolute prerequisite for automatic tumor segmentation, but only the first step in that direction. For the specific identified signature, DCE did not add complementary information to T2 and ADC maps.
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| 8. |
- Löfstedt, Tommy, et al.
(författare)
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Bayesian non-linear regression with spatial priors for noise reduction and error estimation in quantitative MRI with an application in T1 estimation
- 2020
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Ingår i: Physics in Medicine and Biology. - : Institute of Physics (IOP). - 0031-9155 .- 1361-6560. ; 65:22
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose. To develop a method that can reduce and estimate uncertainty in quantitative MR parameter maps without the need for hand-tuning of any hyperparameters.Methods. We present an estimation method where uncertainties are reduced by incorporating information on spatial correlations between neighbouring voxels. The method is based on a Bayesian hierarchical non-linear regression model, where the parameters of interest are sampled, using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), from a high-dimensional posterior distribution with a spatial prior. The degree to which the prior affects the model is determined by an automatic hyperparameter search using an information criterion and is, therefore, free from manual user-dependent tuning. The samples obtained further provide a convenient means to obtain uncertainties in both voxels and regions. The developed method was evaluated on T1 estimations based on the variable flip angle method.Results. The proposed method delivers noise-reduced T1 parameter maps with associated error estimates by combining MCMC sampling, the widely applicable information criterion, and total variation-based denoising. The proposed method results in an overall decrease in estimation error when compared to conventional voxel-wise maximum likelihood estimation. However, this comes with an increased bias in some regions, predominately at tissue interfaces, as well as an increase in computational time.Conclusions. This study provides a method that generates more precise estimates compared to the conventional method, without incorporating user subjectivity, and with the added benefit of uncertainty estimation.
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| 9. |
- Nowik, Patrik, et al.
(författare)
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The dosimetric impact of including the patient table in CT dose estimates
- 2017
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Ingår i: Physics in Medicine and Biology. - : IOP Publishing. - 0031-9155 .- 1361-6560. ; 62:23, s. 538-547
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The purpose of this study was to evaluate the dosimetric impact of including the patient table in Monte Carlo CT dose estimates for both spiral scans and scan projection radiographs (SPR). CT scan acquisitions were simulated for a Siemens SOMATOM Force scanner (Siemens Healthineers, Forchheim, Germany) with and without a patient table present. An adult male, an adult female and a pediatric female voxelized phantom were simulated. The simulated scans included tube voltages of 80 and 120 kVp. Spiral scans simulated without a patient table resulted in effective doses that were overestimated by approximately 5 % compared to the same simulations performed with the patient table present. Doses in selected individual organs (breast, colon, lung, red bone marrow and stomach) were overestimated by up to 8 %. Effective doses from SPR acquired with the X-ray tube stationary at 6 o'clock (posterior-anterior) were overestimated by 14-23 % when the patient table was not included, with individual organ dose discrepancies (breast, colon, lung red bone marrow and stomach) all exceeding 13%. The reference entrance skin dose to the back were in this situation overestimated by 6-15 %. These results highlight the importance of including the patient table in patient dose estimates for such scan situations.
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| 10. |
- Andersson, Jonas, 1975-, et al.
(författare)
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A comparison of different experimental methods for general recombination correction for liquid ionization chambers
- 2012
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Ingår i: Physics in Medicine and Biology. - : Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP). - 0031-9155 .- 1361-6560. ; 57:21, s. 7161-7175
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Radiation dosimetry of highly modulated dose distributions requires a detector with a high spatial resolution. Liquid filled ionization chambers (LICs) have the potential to become a valuable tool for the characterization of such radiation fields. However, the effect of an increased recombination of the charge carriers, as compared to using air as the sensitive medium has to be corrected for. Due to the presence of initial recombination in LICs, the correction for general recombination losses is more complicated than for air-filled ionization chambers. In the present work, recently published experimental methods for general recombination correction for LICs are compared and investigated for both pulsed and continuous beams. The experimental methods are all based on one of two approaches, either measurements at two different dose rates (two-dose-rate methods), or measurements at three different LIC polarizing voltages (three-voltage methods). In a comparison with the two-dose-rate methods, the three-voltage methods fail to achieve accurate corrections in several instances, predominantly at low polarizing voltages and dose rates. However, for continuous beams in the range of polarizing voltages recommended by the manufacturer of the LICs used, the agreement between the different methods is generally within the experimental uncertainties. For pulsed beams, the agreement between the methods is poor. The inaccuracies found in the results from the three-voltage methods are associated with numerical difficulties in solving the resulting equation systems, which also make these methods sensitive to small variations in the experimental data. These issues are more pronounced for the case of pulsed beams. Furthermore, the results suggest that the theoretical modelling of initial recombination used in the three-voltage methods may be a contributing factor to the deviating results observed.
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