| 1. |
- Qatarneh, Sharif M., et al.
(författare)
-
Evaluation of a segmentation procedure to delineate organs for use in construction of a radiation therapy planning atlas
- 2003
-
Ingår i: International Journal of Medical Informatics. - 1386-5056 .- 1872-8243. ; 69, s. 39-55
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objectives: This paper evaluates a semi-automatic segmentation procedure to enhance utilizing atlas based treatment plans. For this application, it is crucial to provide a collection of 'reference' organs, restorable from the atlas so that they closely match those of the current patient. To enable assembling representative organs, we developed a semiautomatic procedure using an active contour method. Method: The 3D organ volume was identified by defining contours on individual slices. The initial organ contours were matched to patient volume data sets and then superimposed on them. These starting contours were then adjusted and refined to rapidly find the organ outline of the given patient. Performance was evaluated by contouring organs of different size, shape complexity, and proximity to surrounding structures. We used representative organs defined on CT volumes obtained from 12 patients and compared the resulting outlines to those drawn by a radiologist. Results: A strong correlation was found between the area measures of the delineated liver (r = 0.992), lung (r = 0.996) and spinal cord (r = 0.81), obtained by both segmentation techniques. A paired Student's t-test showed no statistical difference between the two techniques regarding the liver and spinal cord (p > 0.05). Conclusion: This method could be used to form 'standard' organs, which would form part of a whole body atlas (WBA) database for radiation treatment plans as well as to match atlas organs to new patient data.
|
|
| 2. |
|
|
| 3. |
- Daşu, Alexandru, et al.
(författare)
-
Should single or distributed parameters be used to explain the steepness of tumour control probability curves?
- 2003
-
Ingår i: Physics in Medicine and Biology. - : IOP Publishing. - 0031-9155 .- 1361-6560. ; 48:3, s. 387-397
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Linear quadratic (LQ) modelling allows easy comparison of different fractionation schedules in radiotherapy. However, estimating the radiation effect of a single fractionated treatment introduces many questions with respect to the parameters to be used in the modelling process. Several studies have used tumour control probability (TCP) curves in order to derive the values for the LQ parameters that may be used further for the analysis and ranking of treatment plans. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the biological relevance of these derived parameters, either for the initial number of cells or their intrinsic radiosensitivity, or both. This paper investigates the relationship between single values for the TCP parameters and the resulting dose-response curve. The results of this modelling study show how clinical observations for the position and steepness of the TCP curve can be explained only by the choice of extreme values for the parameters, if they are single values. These extreme values are in contradiction with experimental observations. This contradiction suggests that single values for the parameters are not likely to explain reasonably the clinical observations and that some distributions of input parameters should be taken into consideration.
|
|
| 4. |
- Daşu, Alexandru, et al.
(författare)
-
Theoretical simulation of tumour oxygenation and results from acute and chronic hypoxia
- 2003
-
Ingår i: Physics in Medicine and Biology. - : IOP Publishing. - 0031-9155 .- 1361-6560. ; 48:17, s. 2829-2842
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The tumour microenvironment is considered to be responsible for the outcome of cancer treatment and therefore it is extremely important to characterize and quantify it. Unfortunately, most of the experimental techniques available now are invasive and generally it is not known how this influences the results. Non-invasive methods on the other hand have a geometrical resolution that is not always suited for the modelling of the tumour response. Theoretical simulation of the microenvironment may be an alternative method that can provide quantitative data for accurately describing tumour tissues. This paper presents a computerized model that allows the simulation of the tumour oxygenation. The model simulates numerically the fundamental physical processes of oxygen diffusion and consumption in a two-dimensional geometry in order to study the influence of the different parameters describing the tissue geometry. The paper also presents a novel method to simulate the effects of diffusion-limited (chronic) hypoxia and perfusion-limited (acute) hypoxia. The results show that all the parameters describing tissue vasculature are important for describing tissue oxygenation. Assuming that vascular structure is described by a distribution of inter-vessel distances, both the average and the width of the distribution are needed in order to fully characterize the tissue oxygenation. Incomplete data, such as distributions measured in a non-representative region of the tissue, may not give relevant tissue oxygenation. Theoretical modelling of tumour oxygenation also allows the separation between acutely and chronically hypoxic cells, a distinction that cannot always be seen with other methods. It was observed that the fraction of acutely hypoxic cells depends not only on the fraction of collapsed blood vessels at any particular moment, but also on the distribution of vessels in space as well. All these suggest that theoretical modelling of tissue oxygenation starting from the basic principles is a robust method that can be used to quantify the tissue oxygenation and to provide input parameters for other simulations.
|
|
| 5. |
|
|
