Evaluation of an anthropomorphic male pelvic phantom for image-guided radiotherapy

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Authors: B Schaly, V Varchena, P Au, G Pang

Published Date July 2009 , Volume 2009:2 Pages 69 - 78 DOI 10.2147/RMI.S6114

B Schaly¹, V Varchena², P Au³, G Pang^3,4

¹Grand River Regional Cancer Centre, Kitchener, ON, Canada; ²CIRS Inc., Norfolk, VA, USA; ³Odette Cancer Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada; ⁴Departments of Radiation Oncology and Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Abstract: Soft-tissue imaging in the treatment room is one of the main challenges faced today in high precision radiotherapy. The objective of this work is to evaluate a new anthropomorphic male pelvic phantom (CIRS Inc., Norfolk, VA, USA) that can be used in a radiotherapy department to assess the ability of an X-ray imaging system for imaging soft-tissue targets in the treatment room. To this end, we evaluated the tissue-equivalency of the phantom materials in terms of the linear attenuation and energy absorption coefficients. X-ray computed tomography (CT) images of the phantom were also obtained and compared with that of patients. Our results demonstrated that the male pelvic phantom is a good representation of actual prostate cancer patients and can be a valuable tool for image-guided radiotherapy.

Keywords: image-guided radiotherapy, X-ray imaging, anthropomorphic phantom

PACS numbers: 87.56.Fc, 87.59.bd, 87.85.Lf