Clinical Radiotherapy Physics with MATLAB

Clinical Radiotherapy Physics with MATLAB: A Problem-Solving Approach (Series in Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering)

The first MATLAB® programming book written specifically for clinical radiotherapy medical physicists and medical physics trainees, this much-needed book teaches users how to create their own clinical applications using MATLAB®, as a complement to commercial software particularly when the latter does not cover specific local clinical needs.

Chapters explore key radiotherapy areas such as handling volumes, 3D dose calculation, comparing dose distributions, reconstructing treatment plans and their summations, and automated tests for machine quality assurance. Readers will learn to independently analyse and process images, doses, structures, and other radiotherapy clinical data to deal with standard and non-standard situations in radiotherapy. This book will also significantly improve understanding of areas such as data nature, information content, DICOM RT standard, and data flow. It will be an invaluable reference for students of medical physics, in addition to clinical radiotherapy physicists and researchers working in radiotherapy.

Features:

• Includes real clinical medical physics applications derived from actual clinical problems
• Provides commented MATLAB® scripts working with sample data and/or own data matching input requirements
• Promotes critical thinking and practical problem solving skills

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: MATLAB Essentials and Principles of Simple Programming
Chapter 2: Radiotherapy Physics Related Data Types and Basic Operations
Chapter 3: Reconstructing Basic DICOM RT Data
Chapter 4: Modifying DICOM Data in Radiotherapy
Chapter 5: Simple 3D Plan Sum Using Rigid Registration
Chapter 6: Handling Regions and Volumes of Interest in Radiotherapy
Chapter 7: Three-Dimensional Dose Calculation in Radiotherapy
Chapter 8: Semi-Automated Measurement of the Major Mechanical Parameters of Linacs
Chapter 9: Comparing Dose Distributions
Chapter 10: Example of Accessory Modeling in Radiotherapy