INVESTIGATION OF A PRACTICAL PATIENT DOSE INDEX FOR ASSESSMENT OF PATIENT ORGAN DOSE FROM CONE-BEAM COMPUTED...

Area of Science:

• Medical Physics
• Radiological Sciences
• Imaging Technology

Background:

• Accurate patient dosimetry is crucial for medical imaging procedures like cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT).
• Existing dose indices may not precisely reflect organ doses in specific patient populations, such as prostate cancer patients.
• Establishing a practical and accurate dose index is essential for radiation safety in CBCT.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate and identify a practical patient dose index for assessing organ dose to the prostate during CBCT scans.
• To compare the accuracy of eight different dose indices against Monte Carlo (MC) simulated organ dose for prostate cancer patients.
• To determine the most reliable dose index for clinical application in prostate CBCT dosimetry.

Main Methods:

• Compared eight dose indices: CTDI100, CTDIIEC, CTDI∞, f(0)PMMA, f(0)Ap, f(0)Pat, SSDEconv, and SSDEmod.
• Utilized Monte Carlo (MC) simulation to determine the reference organ dose for the prostate (ODprost) in a patient phantom.
• Assessed the error rate of each dose index relative to the ODprost.

Main Results:

• The f(0)Pat dose index demonstrated the lowest error rate (5%) compared to the reference ODprost (19.3 mGy).
• Other evaluated dose indices showed higher error rates in estimating the prostate organ dose.
• f(0)Pat proved to be the most accurate practical dose index among those tested.

Conclusions:

• The f(0)Pat dose index is recommended as a practical and accurate tool for assessing patient organ dose in prostate cancer CBCT.
• This finding can aid in optimizing radiation dose management for prostate cancer patients undergoing CBCT.
• Further validation of f(0)Pat in diverse clinical scenarios is warranted.