PURPOSE To investigate effects of metal artifacts on the dose calculation accuracy of three dose calculation algorithms on CT and cone-beam CT images. METHODS A phantom with and without metal objects was scanned using CT simulator and on-board kV CBCT. Conformal 5-field treatment plans with identical physical and dosimetric parameters were created in the Eclipse™ treatment planning system for...

Recent developments in radiation therapy have been focused on applications of charged particles, especially—protons. Proton therapy can allow higher dose conformality compared to conventional radiation therapy. Dose calculations have an integral role in the successful application of proton therapy. Over the years several dose calculation methods have been proposed in proton therapy. A common ch...

It is documented that well-modeled Monte Carlo dose calculation algorithms are more accurate than traditional correction-based algorithms or convolution algorithms at predicting dose distributions delivered to heterogeneous volumes. This increased accuracy has clinical implications for CyberKnife, particularly when comparing dose distributions between the ray-tracing and Monte Carlo algorithms....

Introduction: An accurate and fast radiation dose calculation is essential for successful radiation radiotherapy. The aim of this study was to implement a new graphic processing unit (GPU) based radiation therapy treatment planning for accurate and fast dose calculation in radiotherapy centers. Materials and Methods: A program was written for parallel runnin...

Introduction: In radiotherapy treatment planning system (TPS), basic input is the data from computed tomography (CT) scan, which takes into account the effect of inhomogeneities in dose calculations. Measurement of CT numbers may be affected by scanner-specific parameters. Therefore, it is important to verify the effect of different CT scanning protocols on Hounsfield unit (HU) and its impact o...

BACKGROUND The accuracy of dose calculation is crucial to the quality of treatment planning and, consequently, to the dose delivered to patients undergoing radiation therapy. Current general calculation algorithms such as Pencil Beam Convolution (PBC) and Collapsed Cone Convolution (CCC) have shortcomings in regard to severe inhomogeneities, particularly in those regions where charged particle ...