Volume 25 (2019): Edizione 3 (September 2019)

Today, to establish a diagnosis, the patient must undergo a biopsy followed by histopathological diagnosis, which causes unnecessary cost, patient trauma, and time delay to obtain a diagnosis. However, the metastases can be discovered by diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, which is a simple method that investigates the light distribution within tissue. The theme of this paper is the use of diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) to determine the optical spectrum of hamster specimen’s tissue and to differentiate biological changes due to laser irradiation (scattering, and cell changes) under the skin. DRS measurements were made on healthy and malignant tissue to diagnose the stages of cancer formation using a fiber-optic probe. The results show that malignant tissue is characterized by a significant decrease in diffuse reflectance spectrum compared to normal tissue.

Signal suppression of the gastrointestinal tract fluids in magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) has been performed using various natural and chemical substances with the different MRCP pulse sequences. This study aimed to investigate the signal suppressions of the grape syrup and the grape syrup/lemon aqueous solutions in MRCP using the heavily T2-weighted sequences. For this purpose, the potassium, iron and manganese contents of grape syrup were measured by atomic absorption spectroscopy. The grape syrup and the grape syrup/lemon solutions with the various grape syrup percentages were imaged using the heavily T2-weighted sequences of MRCP such as T2 HASTE thick slab and T2 SPACE. MRCP in the volunteers was performed before and 10 minutes after oral administration of the grape syrup solution. The concentrations of potassium, iron, and manganese in grape syrup were 34.8, 2.4 and 1 mg/l, respectively. The in vitro study showed significantly lower signal to noise ratio using the grape syrup samples comparing to the grape syrup/lemon. The effective signal suppression for the in vitro study and considerable enhancement of negative contrast in the post-contrast MRCP was obtained using a T2 HASTE thick slab sequence. As a conclusion, the grape syrup solution can be used for signal suppression of the gastrointestinal tract fluid in MRCP as an oral negative contrast material. A T2 HASTE thick slab sequence produces suitable contrast in MRCP images using the grape syrup solution.

Aim: To study the dosimetric advantages of the jaw tracking technique in intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) and volumetric modulated arc radiotherapy (VMAT) for carcinoma of cervix patients.

Materials and Methods: We retrospectively selected ten previously treated cervix patients in this study. All the ten patients underwent CT simulation along with immobilization and positional devices. Targets and organ at risks (OARs) were delineated slice by slice for all the patients. All the patients were planned for IMRT and VMAT with intend to deliver 50 Gy in 25 fractions. All the plans were planned with 6 MV photon beam using millennium-120 multi leaf collimator (MLC) using the TrueBeam linear accelerator. IMRT and VMAT plans were performed with jaw tracking (JT) and with static jaw (SJ) techniques by keeping the same constraints and priorities for the target volumes and critical structures for a particular patient. For standardization, all the plans were normalized to the target mean of the planning target volume. All the plans were accepted with the criteria of bladder mean dose < 40 Gy and rectum mean dose < 40 Gy without compromising the target volumes. Target conformity, dose to the critical structures and low dose volumes were recorded and analyzed for IMRT and VMAT plans with and without jaw tracking for all the patients.

Results: The conformity index average of all patients followed by standard deviation (̄x± σ_̄x) for JT-IMRT, SJ-IMRT, JT-VMAT and SJ-VMAT were 1.176 ± 0.139, 1.175 ± 0.139, 1.193 ± 0.220 and 1.228 ± 0.192 and homogeneity index were 0.089 ± 0.022, 0.085 ± 0.024, 0.102 ± 0.016 and 0.101 ± 0.016. In low dose volume J,T-IMRT shows a 5.4% (p-value < 0.001) overall reduction in volume receiving at least 5 Gy (V₅) compared to SJ-IMRT, whereas 1.2% reduction was observed in V5 volume in JT-VMAT compared to SJ-VMAT. JT-IMRT showed mean reduction in rectum and bladder of 1.34% (p-value < 0.001) and 1.46% (p-value < 0.001) compared to SJ-IMRT, while only 0.30% and 0.03% reduction were observed between JT-VMAT and SJ-VMAT. JT-IMRT plans also showed considerable dose reduction to inthe testine, right femoral head, left femoral head and cauda compared to the SJ-IMRT plans.

Conclusion: Jaw tracking resulted in decreased dose to critical structures in IMRT and VMAT plans. But significant dose reductions were observed for critical structures in the JT-IMRT compared to SJ-IMRT technique. In JT-VMAT plans dose reduction to the critical structures were not significant compared to the JT-IMRT due to relatively lesser monitor units in the VMAT plans.

Monte Carlo and TL dosimetry applied to the characterization of ¹²⁵I brachytherapy with a different design with other ¹²⁵I seeds. In a water phantom, lattice configuration simulated with ¹²⁵I seed in the center and 10 nm gold and gadolinium nan-particle filed voxels. This simulation conducted to the characterization of the nano-particles DEF in low energy and prostate tissue. To study of the prostate brachytherapy, a humanoid computational phantom developed by CT slices applied. KTMAN-2 computational phantom contains 29 organs and 19 skeletal regions and was produced from cross-sectional x-ray computed tomography (CT slices) images. The simulated seed was ¹²⁵I seed having an average energy of 28.4 keV for photons, a half-life of 59.4 days. DEF factor in the seed radiation energy (28.4 keV) DEF factor was found to be two times higher for the gold nano-particles. It was revealed than gold-nano-particles posing Z about 1.24 times higher than gadolinium led to around 200% DEF increasing in the same conditions and the nano-particles size. It was concluded that in low energy sources brachytherapy, photoelectric is dominant in the presence of relative high element nanoparticles. This leads to a high dose increasing in some micro-meters and causes a dramatic dose gradient in the vicinity of a nano-particle. This dose gradient effectively kills the tumor cells in continuous low energy irradiation in the presence of a high Z material nano-scaled particle. Application of gold nano-particles in low energy brachytherapy is recommended.

Nowadays healthcare is a standout amongst the most rapidly developing application zone in body area networks (BANs). BANs are anticipated to play a significant role in the stream of patient-health monitoring. To provide, secure BAN access to the entire system without disturbing the confidentiality of patients’ therapeutic data is a major challenge. Security of the BAN can be improved by using a polynomial curve-based steganography technique. The performance of the proposed BAN is evaluated by using a Fourier transform and Wavelet transform. The results of the proposed BAN are presented and compared for both the transforms.

This study developed a simple wire phantom and an algorithm to automatically measure the modulation transfer function (MTF) in computed tomography (CT) and implemented it to evaluate the effect of focal spot size and reconstruction filter type. The phantom consisted of a resin cylinder filled with water, with a tin wire of diameter 0.1 mm positioned along the center of the cylinder. The automated MTF algorithm used an axial image of the phantom and comprised several steps. The center position of a region of interest (ROI) was automatically determined at the center of the wire image. The pixels were then summed along the y-direction to obtain the profile of the pixel values at a point along the x-direction. Following this, both edges of the profile were made equal to zero. The profile curve was then normalized so that the total of all the data was equal to unity. The normalized profile curve is the line spread function (LSF), and the MTF curve was obtained by taking its Fourier transform. Our system (phantom and algorithm) is able to differentiate the MTFs of CT images from different focal sizes and reconstruction filter types.

Radiation education is necessary for a wide variety of people, such as radiation workers particularly for students of secondary school and higher education institution who learn radiation sciences. The fact that we could not see or feel radiation makes it difficult to understand it. The use of radiation trajectories shown on a personal computer should be useful to overcome this difficulty. In order to understand radiation behaviour inside the material, we have developed a Simu-Rad (Copyright: LY2018002738) by using Monte Carlo simulation programme. One who has no programming knowledge is able to simulate photons in a material through the developed programme. The program could become a computer aided learning tool for radiation related courses. We aim to facilitate lecturer from ‘The Traditional Classroom’ to ‘The Flipped Classroom’ for radiation education concerning in the era of IR 4.0. To validate our radiation simulator, we calculate photon linear attenuation coefficient (µ) of an aluminium material which commonly used as a filter in diagnostic radiology. µ is one of the main characteristics to understand how the radiation attenuated inside the materials. We calculate at energy photon of 662 keV (Cs-137 radiation source) to compare our results of µ with the XCOM database. Consequently, the results from the developed simulator comparable with the database verified our programme to be used for radiation study.