Purpose: Multiple Coulomb scattering (MCS) poses a challenge in proton CT (pCT) image reconstruction. The assumption of straight paths is replaced with Bayesian models of the most likely path (MLP). Current MLP-based pCT reconstruction approaches assume a water scattering environment. We propose an MLP formalism based on accurate determination of s...
Published in Physica Medica
Monolithic scintillators are more frequently used in PET instrumentation due to their advantages in terms of accurate position estimation of the impinging gamma rays both planar and depth of interaction, their increased efficiency, and expected timing capabilities. Such timing performance has been studied when those blocks are coupled to digital ph...
Published in Physica Medica
Particle therapy (including protons and carbon ions) allows a highly conformal treatment of deep-seated tumours with good accuracy and minimal dose to surrounding tissues, compared to conventional radiotherapy using X-rays. Following impressive results from early phase trials, over the last decades particle therapy in Europe has made considerable p...
GATE is public domain software widely used for Monte Carlo simulation in emission tomography. Validations of GATE have primarily been performed on a whole-system basis, leaving the possibility that errors in one sub-system may be offset by errors in others. We assess the accuracy of the GATE PET coincidence generation sub-system in isolation, focus...
Published in Physica Medica
BackgroundThe epidemiology of the slightly radioactive contrast agent named Thorotrast presents a very long latency period between the injection and the development of the related pathologies. It is an example of the more general problem posed by a radioactive internal contaminant whose effects are not noteworthy in the short term but become dramat...
Published in Physica Medica
Background and purposeHelical tomotherapy (HT) can deliver highly conformal, uniform doses to the target volume. However, HT can only be delivered in a coplanar mode.The purpose of this study was to perform a dosimetric comparison of HT versus coplanar (cIMRT) and non-coplanar (n-cIMRT) beam arrangements on a conventional linear accelerator in a di...
Published in Physica Medica
This study investigates the superficial dose from FFF beams in comparison with the conventional flattened ones using a Monte Carlo (MC) method. Published phase-space files which incorporated real geometry of a TrueBeam accelerator were used for the dose calculation in phantom and clinical cases. The photon fluence on the central axis is 3 times tha...
Published in Physica Medica
PurposeMonte Carlo study of radiation transmission around areas surrounding a PET room. MethodsAn extended population of patients administered with 18F-FDG for PET-CT investigations was studied, collecting air kerma rate and gamma ray spectra measurements at a reference distance. An MC model of the diagnostic room was developed, including the scann...
Published in Physica Medica
This paper reports novel development and preliminary application of an image registration technique for diagnosis of abdominal adhesions imaged with cine-MRI (cMRI). Adhesions can severely compromise the movement and physiological function of the abdominal contents, and their presence is difficult to detect. The image registration approach presente...
Published in Physica Medica
PurposeQuality assurance (QA) phantoms for testing different image quality parameters in computed tomography (CT) are commercially available. Such phantoms are also used as reference for acceptance in the specifications of CT-scanners. The aim of this study was to analyze the characteristics of the most commonly used QA phantom in CT: Catphan 500/5...
