Investigations in x-ray computed tomography polyacrylamide gel dosimetry

Abstract

Polyacrylamide gels (PAGs) are radiosensitive materials currently under development for use as three-dimensional (3D) dosimeters in radiation therapy. Dose information is recorded in the gels and extracted through imaging. X-ray computed tomography (CT) has emerged as a promising gel imaging method due to a change in gel density that occurs upon irradiation. The accessibility of CT technology to cancer hospitals makes CT read out clinically attractive; however, the technique remains of limited clinical use due in part to poor dose resolution. This thesis investigates the use of CT for extracting dose information from PAGs with an overall goal of improving achievable dose resolution. Thesis results are divided into three studies: a gel-compositional study, a study of noise and dose resolution, and a digital filtering study. The first study investigates the effects of gel composition on PAG CT dose response and the underlying density change. Results indicate dramatic variation in CT dose response sensitivity and range with gel composition. A model is developed to describe gel density change with dose, revealing two fundamental properties of the density to dose response: the density change per unit polymer yield is highest for gels with low and high concentrations of crosslinking molecules, and dose response sensitivity is linearly dependent on the total concentration of monomers in the gel. The second study investigates strategies for minimizing noise in CT polymer gel dosimetry and assesses system performance. Specifically, the effects of phantom design, scanning technique, and voxel size on image noise are investigated and the effect of scanning protocol on imaging time is established. The dose resolution achievable with an optimized system is then calculated, given voxel size and imaging time constraints, and compared with published values for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and optical CT gel dosimetry. The third study investigates the potential of image filtering for improved dose resolution in CT gel dosimetry. CT image noise is characterized and appropriate filters are tested on a CT image of a PAG irradiated with a clinically relevant dose distribution. Filter performance is found to vary dramatically, with the best filters more than halving the dose resolution without significantly distorting the spatial distribution of dose. In summary, this thesis provides insight into the fundamental nature of PAG density to dose response, develops strategies for minimizing image noise, quantifies system performance, and demonstrates that digital image filtering is an effective tool to provide additional improvements to dose resolution. © 2005, American Association of Physicists in Medicine. All rights reserved.