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一种基于水等效系数的快速质子放疗剂量平均线性能量传递分布计算方法

A Fast Proton Therapy Dose-averaged Linear Energy Transfer Calculation Method Based on Water Equivalent Ratio

  • 摘要: 剂量平均线性能量传递(dose-averaged Linear Energy Transfer, LETd)的计算主要采用解析法和蒙特卡罗(Monte Carlo, MC)方法。解析法计算速度较快,但精度有限;MC方法精度高,但计算耗时较长。本研究开发了一种基于MC预生成查找表的混合解析方法,以兼顾计算效率与精度。使用MC软件MCsquare,得到治疗计划系统(Treatment Planning System, TPS)使用的离散能量质子束在水中的三维LETd分布作为基础数据集。在计算时,首先将CT影像数据转换得到水等效系数(Water Equivalent Ratio, WER)分布,逐点读取照射点能量和坐标信息。每个体素根据其与照射点中心轴线距离和沿入射方向经过的水等效长度,对照基础数据集计算LETd,最终通过剂量加权的方式得到三维的LETd分布。本研究在5例肺癌的临床病例上进行了实验并与OpenTPS的计算结果进行了比较,采用3%/3 mm标准的伽马分析对剂量乘LETd (D·LETd)分布进行一致性评估,通过率可以达到(96.68±1.65)%。在CPU为AMD EPYC 9374F,GPU为NVIDIA RTX A5000的工作站上,平均计算耗时为36 s,显著低于OpenTPS (P=0.0313)。本研究提出的快速LETd计算方法经验证可以在保持计算精度的同时,大幅降低计算时间,这为评估质子治疗中LETd在靶区与危及器官(Organ At Risk, OAR)内的分布奠定了基础,也为基于生物剂量进行优化的治疗计划提供了支撑。

     

    Abstract: The dose-averaged linear energy transfer (LETd) in proton therapy is primarily computed using either analytical methods or Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. Analytical approaches are computationally efficient but limited in accuracy, whereas MC methods provide high precision at the cost of substantial computation time. In this study, we developed a hybrid analytical LETd calculation method based on precomputed MC lookup tables, aiming to achieve a balance between accuracy and efficiency. A three-dimensional LETd dataset in water for all discrete proton energies used in the treatment planning system was generated using the MCsquare Monte Carlo simulation platform and employed as the foundational lookup table for the proposed method. During LETd calculation, the patient CT images were first converted into water equivalent ratio (WER) maps. For each voxel, the LETd value was obtained by referencing the precomputed dataset according to its lateral distance from the beam’s central axis and the water equivalent length traversed along the beam incidence direction. The final three-dimensional LETd distribution was then generated through dose-weighted accμmulation across all contributing spots. The proposed method was evaluated using five clinical lung cancer cases and compared against LETd calculations from OpenTPS. Agreement between the D·LETd distributions was assessed using 3%/3 mm three-dimensional Gamma analysis, yielding a passing rate of 96.68±1.65%. On a workstation equipped with an AMD EPYC 9374F CPU and an NVIDIA RTX A5000 GPU, the average computation time was 36 s, significantly shorter than that of OpenTPS (P=0.0313). These results demonstrate that the proposed fast LETd calculation method can substantially reduce computation time while maintaining high accuracy. This provides a practical foundation for assessing LETd distributions in targets and organs at risk (OARs), and supports future biologically informed treatment plan optimization in proton therapy.

     

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