Development of Monte Carlo track structure simulations for protons and carbon ions in water

The goal of radiation therapy is to eradicate tumour cells while minimising radiation dose to healthy tissues. Ions including protons and carbon ions have gained increasing interest for cancer treatment. Advantages of ion beam therapy are conformal dose distribution, and for ions heavier than protons increased biological effectiveness in cell killing, compared to conventional radiation therapy using photons. Despite these advantages, fundamental problems in ion beam therapy include accuracy of dose determination at the cellular level, and characterisation of the radiation quality at the microscopic scale. Due to the high density of interactions along ion tracks, inhomogeneity of dose and track parameters at the cellular level is one of the major concerns for ion beam therapy. The aim of the thesis is to develop computational tools for dosimetry of ion tracks at the molecular level. Event-by-event Monte Carlo track structure (MCTS) simulations were developed for full-slowing-down tracks of protons and carbon ions in water representing cellular environment. In Paper I, the extension of the MCTS code KURBUC_proton was carried out to energies up to 300 MeV, covering the entire proton energy range used in radiation therapy. Physical properties and microdosimetry of proton tracks were investigated and benchmarked with the experimental data. Papers II-V describe the development of the MCTS code for full-slowing-down tracks of carbon ions. In Papers II-IV, the classical trajectory Monte Carlo (CTMC) model was developed for the calculation of interaction cross sections for low and intermediate energy carbon projectiles of all charge states (C0 to C6+) in water. In Paper V, the calculated cross sections were implemented in a new MCTS code KURBUC_carbon simulating carbon ions of energies 1-104 keV/u in water. This development allows the investigation of track parameters in the Bragg peak region of carbon ion beams. Publication of the thesis and the published papers make contribution to the physics of ion interactions in matter, and provide a new and complete database of electronic interaction cross sections for low and intermediate energy carbon projectiles of all charge states in water. The MCTS codes for protons and carbon ions provide new tools for biophysical study, including microdosimetry, of ion tracks at cellular and subcellular levels, in particular in the Bragg peak region of these ions.At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Submitted. Paper 5: Submitted. </p

CBCT-to-CT Translation Using Registration-Based Generative Adversarial Networks in Patients with Head and Neck Cancer

Recently, deep learning with generative adversarial networks (GANs) has been applied in multi-domain image-to-image translation. This study aims to improve the image quality of cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) by generating synthetic CT (sCT) that maintains the patient’s anatomy as in CBCT, while having the image quality of CT. As CBCT and CT are acquired at different time points, it is challenging to obtain paired images with aligned anatomy for supervised training. To address this limitation, the study incorporated a registration network (RegNet) into GAN during training. RegNet can dynamically estimate the correct labels, allowing supervised learning with noisy labels. The study developed and evaluated the approach using imaging data from 146 patients with head and neck cancer. The results showed that GAN trained with RegNet performed better than those trained without RegNet. Specifically, in the UNIT model trained with RegNet, the mean absolute error (MAE) was reduced from 40.46 to 37.21, the root mean-square error (RMSE) was reduced from 119.45 to 108.86, the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) was increased from 28.67 to 29.55, and the structural similarity index (SSIM) was increased from 0.8630 to 0.8791. The sCT generated from the model had fewer artifacts and retained the anatomical information as in CBCT

Assessment of Fetal Dose and Health Effect to the Fetus from Breast Cancer Radiotherapy during Pregnancy

Decision for radiotherapy during the first trimester of pregnancy may occur, as patients may not realize their pregnancy at the very early stage. Since radiation dose can affect fetal development, the aim of this study was to evaluate fetal dose and associated deterministic effects and risks to the fetus from breast cancer radiotherapy of an 8-week pregnant patient. PHITS (Particle and Heavy Ion Transport code System) Monte Carlo simulation and the J-45 computational pregnancy phantom were used to simulate breast cancer radiotherapy from a 6 MV TrueBeam linear accelerator using the three dimensional-conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT) technique with a prescribed dose to the planning target volume (PTV) of 50 Gy. Once the fetal dose was evaluated, the occurrence of the deterministic effects and risks for developing stochastic effects in the fetus were assessed using the recommendations of NCRP Report No. 174, AAPM Report No. 50, and ICRP Publication 84. The fetal dose was evaluated to be 3.37 &plusmn; 2.66 mGy, suggesting that the fetus was expected to have no additional deterministic effects, while the risks for developing cancer and malfunctions were similar to that expected from exposure to background radiation. The comparison with the other studies showed that accurate consideration of fetal position and size was important for dose determination in the fetus, especially at the early pregnancy stage when the fetus is very small

Correction: Suwanbut et al. Assessment of Fetal Dose and Health Effect to the Fetus from Breast Cancer Radiotherapy during Pregnancy. <i>Life</i> 2022, <i>12</i>, 84

In the original publication [...

Track Reconstruction with Cosmic Ray Data at the Tracker Integration Facility

The subsystems of the CMS silicon strip tracker were integrated and commissioned at the Tracker Integration Facility (TIF) in the period from November 2006 to July 2007. As part of the commissioning, large samples of cosmic ray data were recorded under various running conditions in the absence of a magnetic field. Cosmic rays detected by scintillation counters were used to trigger the readout of up to 15\,\% of the final silicon strip detector, and over 4.7~million events were recorded. This document describes the cosmic track reconstruction and presents results on the performance of track and hit reconstruction as from dedicated analyses