Novel techniques towards improving helical tomotherapy delivery and quality assurance
Abstract
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] TomoTherapy (TomoTherapy, Inc., Madison, WI), an Image-Guided Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IG-IMRT) modality, has been used to treat a variety of cancer sites. While radiation therapy, a rapidly expanding field, has increased in accuracy and provided patients with highly tailored radiation treatments, it has also increased in delivery complexity which can be potentially harmful to patients. We evaluated techniques to improve Tomotherapy patient safety and treatment workflow. Exit detector data was collected during delivered treatments with Tomotherapy's the on-board image detector. The exit detector data was used to reconstructed delivered dose distributions which gave a more accurate representation of the delivered treatments. However, this process requires additional time in the clinical workflow. To make up time, Dynamic delivery techniques, which implement dynamic jaw widths and varied couch speeds, were introduced and reported a decrease delivery times while keeping the integrity of the treatment plans. Different techniques to improve treatment delivery have been studied and the feasibility of using exit detector data for quality assurance has been explored. The results have suggested that utilizing the tools investigated in this dissertation have the potential to improve the TomoTherapy treatment process as a whole.
Degree
Ph. D.
Thesis Department
Rights
Access is limited to the campus of the University of Missouri--Columbia.