IS2aR, a computational tool to transform voxelized reference phantoms into patient-specific whole-body virtual CTs for peripheral dose estimation

Abstract

Background: The risk of radiogenic cancer induction due to radiotherapy depends on the dose received by the patient's organs. Knowing the position of all organs is needed to assess this dose in a personalized way. However, radiotherapy planning computed tomography (pCT) scans contain truncated patient anatomy, limiting personalized dose evaluation.

Purpose: To develop a simple and freely available computational tool that adapts an ICRP reference computational phantom to generate a patient-specific whole-body CT for peripheral dose computations.

Methods: Various bone-segmentation methods were explored onto fifteen pCTs, and the one with the highest Sørensen-Dice coefficient was implemented. The reference phantom is registered to the pCT, obtaining a registration transform matrix, which is then applied to create the whole-body virtual CT. Additional validation involved a comparison of absorbed doses to organs delineated on both the pCT and the virtual CT.

Results: A dedicated graphical user interface was designed and implemented to house the developed functions for i) selecting a registration region on which automatic bone segmentation and rigid registration will occur, ii) displaying the results of these processes under selectable views, and iii) exporting the final patient-specific whole-body CT. This software was termed IS²aR. The tested whole-body virtual CT generated by IS²aR fulfilled our requirements.

Conclusions: IS²aR is a user-friendly computational software to create a personalized whole-body CT containing the original structures in the reference phantom. The personalized dose deposited in peripheral organs can be estimated further to assess second cancer induction risk in epidemiological studies.

Keywords: Image processing; Peripheral dose estimation; Radiotherapy; Whole-body virtual CT.