Proton, as well as other ion, beams applied by electro-magnetic deflection in pencil-beam scanning (PBS) are minimally perturbed and thus can be quantified a priori by their fundamental interactions in a medium. This a priori quantification permits an optimal reduction of characterizing measurements on a particular PBS delivery system. The combination of a priori quantification and measurements will then suffice to fully describe the physical interactions necessary for treatment planning purposes. We consider, for proton beams, these interactions and derive a ‘Golden’ beam data set. The Golden beam data set quantifies the pristine Bragg peak depth-dose distribution in terms of primary, multiple Coulomb scatter, and secondary, nuclear scatter, components. The set reduces the required measurements on a PBS delivery system to the measurement of energy spread and initial phase space as a function of energy. The depth doses are described in absolute units of Gy(RB...

Traditionally, dose in proton radiotherapy is prescribed as Gy(RBE) by scaling up the physical dose by 10%. The relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of protons is considered to vary with dose-averaged linear energy transfer (LET _d ), dose (d) and (α/β) _x . The increase of RBE with depth causes a shift of the falloff of the beam, i.e. a change of the beam range. The magnitude of this shift will depend on dose and (α/β) _x . The aim of this project was to quantify the dependence of the range shift on these parameters. Three double-scattered beams of different ranges incident on a computational phantom consisting of different regions of interest (ROIs) were used. Each ROI was assigned with (α/β) _x values between 0.5 and 20 Gy. The distribution of LET _d within each ROI was obtained from a Monte Carlo simulation. The LET _d distribution depends on the beam energy and thus its nominal ra...

Tissue- and water-equivalent materials (TEMs) are widely used in quality assurance and calibration procedures, both in radiodiagnostics and radiotherapy. In radiotherapy, particularly, the TEMs are often used for computed tomography (CT) number calibration in treatment planning systems. However, currently available TEMs may not be very accurate in the determination of the calibration curves due to their limitation in mimicking radiation characteristics of the corresponding real tissues in both low- and high-energy ranges. Therefore, we are proposing a new formulation of TEMs using a stoichiometric analysis method to obtain TEMs for the calibration purposes. We combined the stoichiometric calibration and the basic data method to compose base materials to develop TEMs matching standard real tissues from ICRU Report 44 and 46. First, the CT numbers of six materials with known elemental compositions were measured to get constants for the stoichiometric calibration. The results of the...

We study a class of smooth maps of the form



where h : [0, 1] → [0, 1] is a unimodal map exhibiting an attracting periodic point of prime period 3, and ω is irrational ( ). We show that the following phenomenon can occur for certain h and : There exists a single measurable function

The specification of shielding for CT facilities in the UK and many other countries has been based on isodose scatter curves supplied by the manufacturers combined with the scanner's mAs workload. Shielding calculations for radiography and fluoroscopy are linked to a dose measurement of radiation incident on the patient called the kerma–area product (KAP), and a related quantity, the dose-length product (DLP), is now employed for assessment of CT patient doses. In this study the link between scatter air kerma and DLP has been investigated for CT scanners from different manufacturers. Scatter air kerma values have been measured and scatter factors established that can be used to estimate air kerma levels within CT scanning rooms. Factors recommended to derive the scatter air kerma at 1 m from the isocentre are 0.36 µGy (mGy cm) ⁻¹ for the body and 0.14 µGy (mGy cm) ⁻¹ for head scans. The CT scanner gantries only transmit 10% of the scatter air kerma level and t...

Isothermal rebreathing has been proposed as an experimental technique for estimating the alveolar levels of hydrophilic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath. Using the prototypic test compounds acetone and methanol, we demonstrate that the end-tidal breath profiles of such substances during isothermal rebreathing show a characteristic increase that contradicts the conventional pulmonary inert gas elimination theory due to Farhi. On the other hand, these profiles can reliably be captured by virtue of a previously developed mathematical model for the general exhalation kinetics of highly soluble, blood-borne VOCs, which explicitly takes into account airway gas exchange as a major determinant of the observable breath output. This model allows for a mechanistic analysis of various rebreathing protocols suggested in the literature. In particular, it predicts that the end-exhaled levels of acetone and methanol measured during free tidal breathing will underestimat...

To date, thermistors are used to continuously monitor the body temperature of newborn babies in the neonatal intensive care unit. The thermistor probe is attached to the body with a strong adhesive tape to ensure that the probe stays in place. However, these strong adhesives are shown to increase microbial growth and cause serious skin injuries via epidermal stripping. The latter compromises the skin's ability to serve as a protective barrier leading to increase in water loss and further microbial infections. In this paper, a new approach is introduced that eliminates the need for an adhesive. Instead, two kinds of fluorophores are entrapped in a skin-friendly chitosan gel that can be easily wiped on and off of the skin, and has antimicrobial properties as well. A CCD camera is used to detect the temperature-dependent fluorescence of the fluorophore, tris(1,10-phenthroline)ruthenium(II) while 8-aminopyrene-1,3,6-trisulfonic acid serves as the reference. This temperature sensor wa...

Se-79 is a long-lived radionuclide of potential radiological significance in relation to the deep geological disposal of solid radioactive wastes. In the context of release to the terrestrial environment, its main radiological impact is delivered through food chain pathways. Therefore, its accumulation in soils and uptake by plants is an important consideration in post-closure safety assessment studies. However, representation of its behaviour in the soil–plant system requires consideration of the multiple valence states that it can exhibit under different redox conditions and its susceptibility to volatilisation. A simple model is described that includes seasonal variations in soil hydrology and their effects on the mobility and root uptake of Se-79. Illustrative calculations are undertaken with the model, to demonstrate its capabilities for interpreting experimental data on the behaviour of Se-79 in soils and plants, and for making projections on the long-term behaviour of Se-7...

It is now more than six months since the beginning of the accident on 11 March 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. The Japanese government and local health authorities have started to collect the information necessary to estimate radiation doses received by those living in the area around the plant, drafted plans for the health care of residents, and started to implement some of them. This paper reviews and discusses the studies necessary for risk evaluation of cancer and non-cancer diseases, including those already planned, mainly from the view point of evaluating health risk using epidemiological approaches. In the long run, it is important to establish a cohort with a control group. Even if the cumulative doses are estimated to be so low that it is difficult to evaluate the risk of cancer and non-cancer diseases, it is necessary to conduct such a study to reassure residents. The health care programme of the Fukushima Prefecture government, including hea...

We report a novel method for estimating fluorescence impulse response function (fIRF) from noise-corrupted time-domain fluorescence measurements of biological tissue. This method is based on the use of high-order Laguerre basis functions and a constrained least-squares approach that addresses the problem of overfitting due to increased model complexity. The new method was extensively evaluated on fluorescence data from simulation, fluorescent standard dyes, ex vivo tissue samples of atherosclerotic plaques and in vivo oral carcinoma. Current results demonstrate that this method allows for rapid and accurate deconvolution of multiple channel fluorescence decays without adaptively adjusting the Laguerre scale parameter. The appropriate choice of the scale parameter is essential for accurate estimation of the fIRF. The method described here is anticipated to play an important role in the development of computational techniques for real-time analysis of time-resolved fl...