A design of a DICOM-RT-based tool box for nonrigid 4D dose calculation

Area of Science:

• Medical Physics
• Radiation Oncology
• Image Processing

Background:

• Accurate dose calculation is crucial for effective radiation therapy, especially for moving targets.
• Traditional dose calculation methods may not adequately account for respiratory motion.
• Deformable image registration offers a potential solution for handling target motion during treatment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and present a DICOM-RT-based toolbox for 4D dose calculation.
• To facilitate dose calculation based on deformable voxel-dose registration.
• To evaluate the clinical efficacy and robustness of the developed toolbox.

Main Methods:

• Development of a MATLAB and CERR-based toolbox with five core functions.
• Implementation of deformable image registration and voxel dose tracking.
• Validation using nine retrospective clinical cases and robustness testing with 27 applications.

Main Results:

• The toolbox successfully performed 4D dose calculation without computational errors in all tested applications.
• Maximum target coverage was achieved in 67% of cases when planning CT was at the temporal mean tumor position.
• Results comparable to existing literature indicate the toolbox's reliability for 4D dose calculation.

Conclusions:

• The developed DICOM-RT toolbox is a reliable tool for 4D dose calculation.
• Deformable registration-based 4D dose calculation can enhance dose evaluation for moving targets.
• The toolbox shows promise for improving treatment planning in radiation oncology.