Crister Ceberg
Professor
Analysis of dose heterogeneity using a subvolume-DVH
Författare
Summary, in English
The dose-volume histogram (DVH) is universally used in radiation therapy for its highly efficient way of summarizing three-dimensional dose distributions. An apparent limitation that is inherent to standard histograms is the loss of spatial information, e.g. it is no longer possible to tell where low- and high-dose regions are, and whether they are connected or disjoint. Two methods for overcoming the spatial fragmentation of low- and high-dose regions are presented, both based on the gray-level size zone matrix, which is a two-dimensional histogram describing the frequencies of connected regions of similar intensities. The first approach is a quantitative metric which can be likened to a homogeneity index. The large cold spot metric (LCS) is here defined to emphasize large contiguous regions receiving too low a dose; emphasis is put on both size, and deviation from the prescribed dose. In contrast, the subvolume-DVH (sDVH) is an extension to the standard DVH and allows for a qualitative evaluation of the degree of dose heterogeneity. The information retained from the two-dimensional histogram is overlaid on top of the DVH and the two are presented simultaneously. Both methods gauge the underlying heterogeneity in ways that the DVH alone cannot, and both have their own merits - the sDVH being more intuitive and the LCS being quantitative.
Avdelning/ar
- Medicinsk strålningsfysik, Lund
Publiceringsår
2017-10-19
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
517-524
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Physics in Medicine and Biology
Volym
62
Issue
21
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
IOP Publishing
Ämne
- Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Medical Imaging
- Other Physics Topics
Nyckelord
- dose inhomogeneity
- DVH
- GLSZM
- texture analysis
- treatment plan comparison
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 0031-9155