Program Information
Radiation-Induced Changes in CT Number Histogram During Chemoradiation Therapy for Pancreatic Cancer
X Chen*, D Schott , Y Song , D Li , W Hall , B Erickson , X Li , Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI
Presentations
SU-F-R-50 (Sunday, July 31, 2016) 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM Room: Exhibit Hall
Purpose:
In an effort of early assessment of treatment response, we investigate radiation induced changes in CT number histogram of GTV during the delivery of chemoradiation therapy (CRT) for pancreatic cancer.
Methods:
Diagnostic-quality CT data acquired daily during routine CT-guided CRT using a CT-on-rails for 20 pancreatic head cancer patients were analyzed. All patients were treated with a radiation dose of 50.4 in 28 fractions. On each daily CT set, the contours of the pancreatic head and the spinal cord were delineated. The Hounsfiled Units (HU) histogram in these contourswere extracted and processed using MATLAB. Eight parameters of the histogram including the mean HU over all the voxels, peak position, volume, standard deviation (SD), skewness, kurtosis, energy, and entropy were calculated for each fraction. The significances were inspected using paired two-tailed t-test and the correlations were analyzed using Spearman rank correlation tests.
Results:
In general, HU histogram in pancreatic head (but not in spinal cord) changed during the CRT delivery. Changes from the first to the last fraction in mean HU in pancreatic head ranged from -13.4 to 3.7 HU with an average of -4.4 HU, which was significant (P<0.001). Among other quantities, the volume decreased, the skewness increased (less skewed), and the kurtosis decreased (less sharp) during the CRT delivery. The changes of mean HU, volume, skewness, and kurtosis became significant after two weeks of treatment. Patient pathological response status is associated with the changes of SD (ΔSD), i.e., ΔSD= 1.85 (average of 7 patients) for good reponse, -0.08 (average of 6 patients) for moderate and poor response.
Conclusion:
Significant changes in HU histogram and the histogram-based metrics (e.g., meam HU, skewness, and kurtosis) in tumor were observed during the course of chemoradiation therapy for pancreas cancer. These changes may be potentially used for early assessment of treatment response.
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