SU‐E‐T‐329: Dosimetric Impact of Implementing Metal Artifact Reduction Methods and Metal Energy Deposition Kernels for Photon Dose Calculations

Abstract

Purpose:To investigate two strategies for reducing dose calculation errors near metal implants: use of CT metal artifact reduction methods and implementation of metal‐based energy deposition kernels in the convolution/superposition (C/S) method.Methods:Radiochromic film was used to measure the dose upstream and downstream of titanium and Cerrobend implants. To assess the dosimetric impact of metal artifact reduction methods, dose calculations were performed using baseline, uncorrected images and metal artifact reductionMethods:Philips O‐MAR, GE's monochromatic gemstone spectral imaging (GSI) using dual‐energy CT, and GSI imaging with metal artifact reduction software applied (MARs).To assess the impact of metal kernels, titanium and silver kernels were implemented into a commercial collapsed cone C/S algorithm.Results:The CT artifact reduction methods were more successful for titanium than Cerrobend. Interestingly, for beams traversing the metal implant, we found that errors in the dimensions of the metal in the CT images were more important for dose calculation accuracy than reduction of imaging artifacts. The MARs algorithm caused a distortion in the shape of the titanium implant that substantially worsened the calculation accuracy. In comparison to water kernel dose calculations, metal kernels resulted in better modeling of the increased backscatter dose at the upstream interface but decreased accuracy directly downstream of the metal. We also found that the success of metal kernels was dependent on dose grid size, with smaller calculation voxels giving better accuracy.Conclusion:Our study yielded mixed results, with neither the metal artifact reduction methods nor the metal kernels being globally effective at improving dose calculation accuracy. However, some successes were observed. The MARs algorithm decreased errors downstream of Cerrobend by a factor of two, and metal kernels resulted in more accurate backscatter dose upstream of metals. Thus, these two strategies do have the potential to improve accuracy for patients with metal implants in certain scenarios.This work was supported by Public Health Service grants CA 180803 and CA 10953 awarded by the National Cancer Institute, United States of Health and Human Services, and in part by Mobius Medical Systems.