Program Information

Adaptive PET-Based Dose Painting with Tomotherapy

N Darwish*, T Mackie , B Thomadsen , University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI

Presentations

SU-E-J-174 Sunday 3:00PM - 6:00PM Room: Exhibit Hall

Purpose:PET imaging can be converted into dose prescription directly. Due to the variability of the intensity of PET the image, PET prescription maybe superior over uniform dose prescription. Furthermore, unlike the case in image reconstruction of not knowing the image solution in advance, the prescribed dose is known from a PET image a priori. Therefore, optimum beam orientations are derivable.

Methods:We can assume the PET image to be the prescribed dose and invert it to determine the energy fluence. The same method used to reconstruct tissue images from projections could be used to solve the inverse problem of determining beam orientations and modulation patterns from a dose prescription [10]. Unlike standard tomographic reconstruction of images from measured projection profiles, the inversion of the prescribed dose results in photon fluence which may be negative and therefore unphysical. Two-dimensional modulated beams can be modelled in terms of the attenuated or exponential radon transform of the prescribed dose function (assumed to be the PET image in this case), an application of a Ram-Lak filter, and inversion by backprojection. Unlike the case in PET processing, however, the filtered beam obtained from the inversion represents a physical photon fluence. Therefore, a positivity constraint for the fluence (setting negative fluence to zero) must be applied (Brahme et al 1982, Bortfeld et al 1990)

Results:Truncating the negative profiles from the PET data results in an approximation of the derivable energy fluence. Backprojection of the deliverable fluence is an approximation of the dose delivered. The deliverable dose is comparable to the original PET image and is similar to the PET image.

Conclusion:It is possible to use the PET data or image as a direct indicator of deliverable fluence for cylindrical radiotherapy systems such as TomoTherapy.

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