Dose calculation issues ‚in practice‘:
Dose calculation in presence of CT artifacts
•
typical cases in RT: dental
metal implants, hip implants
•
significant dose calculation
errors possible in soft tissue
artifact regions due to wrong
Hounsfield (CT-) values
•
Hounsfield values of metal
structures itself wrong as well
AND usually dose calculation
ESTRO IMRT course 2016
Dose Calculation in Static and Rotational IMRT
London April 7th, 2016
-62-
algorithms do not model
radiation transport through
metal correctly
→
do not trust your dose ‘behind’
metal structures!
→
if possible (hip implants), try
to avoid beam directions passing
metal structures
further reading e.g. Kim et al. 2006 (Radiother. Oncol. 79(2))
pragmatic approach in
our department:
dummy contours,
density override with
water density