Clinical Radiotherapy Physics with MATLAB

A Problem-Solving Approach

Pavel Dvorak

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429019296
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Radiology, Radiotherapy & Nuclear Medicine

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

1MATLAB Essentials and Principles of Simple Programming

Learning Outcomes

LO 1.1 Explain the essentials to start working with MATLAB

LO 1.2 Explain the concept and essential principles of scripting in MATLAB

LO 1.3 Explain the essential principles of algorithmisation

LO 1.4 Perform basic input/output operations including data display, saving, export, and import

LO 1.5 Perform essential file and folder management operations in MATLAB

LO 1.6 Explain the importance of problem specification

LO 1.7 Explain the importance of program testing and documentation

All You Need to Start

Why MATLAB? MATLAB (The Mathworks Inc.) is an established scientific computing platform that has an easily understandable concept, offers powerful HELP and has a wide community of users. The author has decided to use the MATLAB platform because of its simple and natural syntax and for the wide availability of inbuilt functions that can be used efficiently. Optimized inbuilt functions reduce the need for programming at a more basic level, thus saving time and effort. It is inefficient to write scripts for well-established and clearly defined operations (eg, matrix operations such as multiplications, transpositions, or rotations). MATLAB is available as a basic platform with the possible addition of optional toolboxes. The only toolbox used in this book is the Image Processing Toolbox.

MATLAB Interface

Like many common computer applications today, MATLAB opens after the appropriate icon or start menu item is selected and executed. Normally, MATLAB (version R2013a) opens with the default layout shown as a scheme drawing in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1MATLAB (version R2013a) default layout scheme.

The layout can be customized intuitively and easily using the Layout icon in the toolstrip. Most of the layout elements are natural and do not require any explanation for today’s computer user. The most important MATLAB specific features are:

• The PLOTS and APPS tabs contain interactive applications to help guide the user through some specific activities such as plotting a selected variable or curve fitting
• However, working with MATLAB means giving commands in the Command Window. These commands can call MATLAB inbuilt functions, or, they can call scripts created by the user using the MATLAB (or any other text) editor following the MATLAB syntax
• Most of the commands create variables. All current variables including their basic properties are displayed in the Workspace Window
• Until deleted, commands entered in the Command Window are recorded in the Command History and can be navigated by using the dedicated window in the layout (alternatively, the UP and DOWN arrow key with or without specifying commands to search within by indicating first one or few letters, can be used for quick access to Command History from the Command Window directly)
• Folders and navigation helps in organizing an ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• About the Series
• Acknowledgements
• Definition of Terms
• 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 DistributionsThe Gamma Method
• Chapter 10 Example of Accessory Modeling in Radiotherapy
• Index