THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PORT DIGITAL IMAGER

THIS RESEARCH WILL DEVELOP A PORT DIGITAL IMAGER (PDI). THE PDI IS A MONOLITHIC, SOLID-STATE, DETECTOR ARRAY SUBSTITUTE FOR PORT FILM. BECAUSE THE SOLID-STATE ELECTRONICS DIGITIZE THE IMAGE, IMAGING SOFTWARE CAN BE USED IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE PDI TO IMMEDIATELY ENHANCE THE IMAGE CONTRAST. AN EVALUATION OF BEAM POSITION WITH RESPECTTO BONY LANDMARKS AND SIMULATOR TREATMENT PLAN IS POSSIBLE, ONLINE, IN REAL TIME, WHILE THE PATIENT IS STILL ON THE TREATMENT TABLE. LOCALIZATION ERRORS CAN, THEREFORE, BE AVOIDED. THE INSTRUMENT WILL INCREASE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF RADIATION THERAPY AND HELP PREVENT TREATMENT INJURIES. THE TECHNICAL OBJECTIVE OF THE PHASE I EFFORT IS THE DETAILED DESIGN, COMPUTER SIMULATION, AND PERFORMANCE VERIFICATION OF THE PDI. PDI HARDWARE AND IMAGE FORMATION WILL BE COMPUTER SIMULATED IN PHASE I. THE TECHNICAL OBJECTIVE OF PHASE II IS THE FABRICATION OF A PROTOTYPE PDI WITH IMAGE PROCESSING SOFTWARE. ANTHROPOMETRIC PHANTOM EXPERIMENTS WILL BE PERFORMED USING UCLA THERAPEUTIC X-RAY EQUIPMENT TO DETERMINE INSTRUMENT PERFORMANCE AND REFINE IMAGE PROCESSING.