Recently, various deep learning (DL)-based frameworks have been proposed for predicting dose distributions for radiotherapy treatment, which serve as initial dose maps and provide treatment planners with optimization starting points. This can be advantageous for dynamic treatment sites such as pancreatic cancer due to large patient to patient anatomic variations. DL-based methods thus far have used CT and contour maps to train DL networks for predictions of dose distributions. While these inputs provide important information such as density variations within a CT slice as well as spatial locations of various structures within the CT slice, these inputs do not provide radiation dose deposition information, which is typically used in inverse optimization algorithms during treatment planning to reach the desired dose distribution. In this work, we propose a new deep learning-based correction method for generating modulated dose map from non-modulated dose map, which is the dose distribution achieved from uniform beamlet intensities. Our method is consisted of two subnetworks: fusion module and correction module. Fusion module extracts features from CT and contours, including GTV contour and multi-OAR contours. Through hierarchical layers, the extracted feature map is represented as a target activation map, which can well represent the distribution of modulated dose map. To include the geometric information, the target activation map together with non-modulated dose map are then transferred into the correction module to obtain the estimated modulated dose map. Histogram matching loss with traditional losses are used. The goal of histogram matching loss is used to match the distribution of estimated modulated dose to that of ground truth modulated dose map. We performed 3-fold cross-validation on a dataset consisted of 30 patients. Our proposed method generated comparable predictions, compared to the ground truth, for 20/23 clinically relevant dose volume parameters. Overall results demonstrate the feasibility and efficacy of our proposed DL-based method for pancreas SBRT dose prediction.
Using analytical and Monte Carlo modeling, we explored performance of a lightweight wearable helmet-shaped brain positron emission tomography (PET), or BET camera, based on thin-film digital Geiger avalanche photodiode arrays with Lutetium-yttrium oxyorthosilicate (LYSO) or LaBr3 scintillators for imaging in vivo human brain function of freely moving and acting subjects. We investigated a spherical cap BET and cylindrical brain PET (CYL) geometries with 250-mm diameter. We also considered a clinical whole-body (WB) LYSO PET/CT scanner. The simulated energy resolutions were 10.8% (LYSO) and 3.3% (LaBr3), and the coincidence window was set at 2 ns. The brain was simulated as a water sphere of uniform F-18 activity with a radius of 100 mm. We found that BET achieved >40% better noise equivalent count (NEC) performance relative to the CYL and >800% than WB. For 10-mm-thick LaBr3 equivalent mass systems, LYSO (7-mm thick) had ∼40% higher NEC than LaBr3. We found that 1×1×3 mm scintillator crystals achieved ∼1.1 mm full-width-half-maximum spatial resolution without parallax errors. Additionally, our simulations showed that LYSO generally outperformed LaBr3 for NEC unless the timing resolution for LaBr3 was considerably smaller than that presently used for LYSO, i.e., well below 300 ps.
Purpose: To explore, by means of analytical and Monte Carlo modeling, performance of a novel lightweight and low-cost wearable helmet-shaped Brain PET (BET) camera based on thin-film digital Geiger Avalanche Photo Diode (dGAPD) with LSO and LaBr3 scintillators for imaging in vivo human brain processes for freely moving and acting subjects responding to various stimuli in any environment.
Methods: We performed analytical and Monte Carlo modeling PET performance of a spherical cap BET device and cylindrical brain PET (CYL) device, both with 25 cm diameter and the same total mass of LSO scintillator. Total mass of LSO in both the BET and CYL systems is about 32 kg for a 25 mm thick scintillator, and 13 kg for 10 mm thick scintillator (assuming an LSO density of 7.3 g/ml). We also investigated a similar system using an LaBr3 scintillator corresponding to 22 kg and 9 kg for the 25 mm and 10 mm thick systems (assuming an LaBr3 density of 5.08 g/ml). In addition, we considered a clinical whole body (WB) LSO PET/CT scanner with 82 cm ring diameter and 15.8 cm axial length to represent a reference system. BET consisted of distributed Autonomous Detector Arrays (ADAs) integrated into Intelligent Autonomous Detector Blocks (IADBs). The ADA comprised of an array of small LYSO scintillator volumes (voxels with base a×a: 1.0 ≤ a ≤ 2.0 mm and length c: 3.0 ≤ c ≤ 6.0 mm) with 5–65 μm thick reflective layers on its five sides and sixth side optically coupled to the matching array of dGAPDs and processing electronics with total thickness of 50 μm. Simulated energy resolution was 10.8% and 3.3% for LSO and LaBr3 respectively and the coincidence window was set at 2 ns. The brain was simulated as a sphere of uniform F-18 activity with diameter of 10 cm embedded in a center of water sphere with diameter of 10 cm.
Results: Analytical and Monte Carlo models showed similar results for lower energy window values (458 keV versus 445 keV for LSO, and 492 keV versus 485 keV for LaBr3), and for the relative performance of system sensitivity. Monte Carlo results further showed that the BET geometry had >50% better noise equivalent count (NEC) performance relative to the CYL geometry, and >1100% better performance than a WB geometry for 25 mm thick LSO and LaBr3. For 10 mm thick LaBr3 equivalent mass systems LSO (7 mm thick) performed ~40% higher NEC than LaBr3. Analytic and Monte Carlo simulations also showed that 1×1×3 mm scintillator crystals can achieve ~1.2 mm FWHM spatial resolution.
Conclusions: This study shows that a spherical cap brain PET system can provide improved NEC while preserving spatial resolution when compared to an equivalent dedicated cylindrical PET brain camera and shows greatly improved PET performance relative to a conventional whole body PET/CT. In addition, our simulations show that LSO will generally outperform LaBr3 for NEC unless the timing resolution for LaBr3 is considerably smaller than presently used for LSO, i.e. well below 300 ps.
Wavelet transforms have been successfully applied in many fields of image processing. Yet, to our knowledge, they have never been directly incorporated to the objective function in Emission Computed Tomography (ECT) image reconstruction. Our aim has been to investigate if the ℓ1-norm of non-decimated discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients of the estimated radiotracer distribution could be effectively used as the regularization term for the penalized-likelihood (PL) reconstruction, where a regularizer is used to enforce the image smoothness in the reconstruction. In this study, the ℓ1-norm of 2D DCT wavelet decomposition was used as a regularization term. The Preconditioned Alternating Projection Algorithm (PAPA), which we proposed in earlier work to solve penalized likelihood (PL) reconstruction with non-differentiable regularizers, was used to solve this optimization problem. The DCT wavelet decompositions were performed on the transaxial reconstructed images. We reconstructed Monte Carlo simulated SPECT data obtained for a numerical phantom with Gaussian blobs as hot lesions and with a warm random lumpy background. Reconstructed images using the proposed method exhibited better noise suppression and improved lesion conspicuity, compared with images reconstructed using expectation maximization (EM) algorithm with Gaussian post filter (GPF). Also, the mean square error (MSE) was smaller, compared with EM-GPF. A critical and challenging aspect of this method was selection of optimal parameters. In summary, our numerical experiments demonstrated that the ℓ1-norm of discrete cosine transform (DCT) wavelet frame transform DCT regularizer shows promise for SPECT image reconstruction using PAPA method.
The objective of this study was to develop very low noise and high-contrast-to-noise ratio fast proximity algorithm for
MAP ECT reconstruction that would allow significant (factor of two or more) patient’s dose reduction, as compared to
conventional OSEM algorithm. We proposed a semi-dynamic Preconditioned Alternating Projection Algorithm (PAPA)
for solving the maximum a posteriori (MAP) emission computed tomography (ECT) reconstruction problem.
Specifically, we formulated the reconstruction problem as a constrained convex optimization problem with the total
variation (TV) regularization. We characterized the solution of the constrained convex optimization problem and showed
that it satisfies a system of fixed-point equations defined in terms of two proximity operators arising from the convex
functions that define the TV-norm and the constrain involved in the problem. We proved theoretically the convergence
of the proposed algorithm. For efficient numerical computation, we introduced to the alternating projection algorithm a
preconditioning matrix: the EM-preconditioner. In numerical experiments using Monte Carlo simulated SPECT data
performance of our algorithms was compared with performance of the conventional EM algorithm with Gaussian postfilter.
Based on the results of these experiments, we observed that PAPA algorithm with the EM-preconditioner
outperforms very significantly the benchmark EM in terms of contrast-to-noise ratio and the noise characteristics of the
reconstructed images.
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