Publication Date

2023

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Coutrakon, George

Degree Name

M.S. (Master of Science)

Legacy Department

Department of Physics

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to compare the range errors for two treatment plans; one using x-ray CT and the other using proton CT for calculating dose distributions in an animal tissue phantom. We shot 150 MeV proton beam through a meat phantom to a film stack to measure the exponential drop of dose at the Bragg peak until zero dose remained. Plotting the depth dose curves and performing gamma analyses are two ways to quantify the proton range errors when comparing them to depth dose curves from film measurements in the phantom. The depth dose curves give us a visual representation of both treatment plans and the measured dose response on film.The proton CT’s treatment plan range error was smaller than the x-ray CT’s. However, both treatment plans were within a millimeter of each other. Both the proton CT and x-ray CT treatment plans showed range errors less than 2% of the range. Both are within the clinical tolerances of ±3.5% The Proton CT treatment plan showed slightly better accuracy than the x-ray CT treatment plan. This study is the second experiment to compare range measurements using proton CT and x-ray CT and is important in testing the image quality of the ProtonVDA’s scanner. In addition, proton CT can be used to create proton DRR’s (digital reconstructed radiographs), which can then be used for daily proton range verification in the treatment room by comparing the DRR to daily proton radiographs.

Extent

59 pages

Language

en

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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