Po-Poster - 02: Generation of MV cone beam CT - a feasibility study

Abstract

The objective of this work was to study the feasibility of acquiring mega-voltage cone-beam CT (MV CBCT) images of sufficient quality for setup verification from 2 D projection images. The generation of mega-voltage cone-beam CT with a standard radiation therapy Primus linear accelerator and an amorphous silicon electronic portal imaging device has been attempted in this work. 2 D projection images of the head section of a Rando phantom were acquired at an interval of 2° from gantry angle of 258° to 102°. Thus 103 2D projection images of the Rando phantom were acquired with 6 MV beam with 1 MU/projection exposure at 300MU/minute dose rate. The estimated dose to the center of the phantom placed at the isocentre of the linac was about 75cGy. The cone angle was only 14.2° and hence for simplicity the images were reconstructed assuming a parallel beam geometry using the IRADON function implemented in MATLAB. High contrast objects are clearly seen on the reconstructed images thus showing the potential of MV CBCT for patient alignment during external beam radiotherapy. From the available image data set, reconstructions were also performed with fewer projections i.e with 52 and 26. Image quality was acceptable with 103 and 52 projections. Reconstruction with Feldkamp cone beam algorithm or iterative algorithm such as Algebraic Reconstruction Techniques (ART) could further improve the image quality.