According to improved radiation therapy technology such as IMRT and proton therapy, the accuracy of patient alignment system is more emphasized and IGRT is dominated research field in radiation oncology. We proposed to study the feasibility of cone-beam CT system using simple x-ray imaging systems for image guided proton therapy at National Cancer Center. 180 projection views (2,304×3,200, 14 bit with 127 Ռm pixel pitch) for the geometrical calibration phantom and humanoid phantoms (skull, abdomen) were acquired with 2° step angle using x-ray imaging system of proton therapy gantry room (360° for 1 rotation). The geometrical calibration was performed for misalignments between the x-ray source and the flat-panel detector, such as distances and slanted angle using available algorithm. With the geometrically calibrated projection view, Feldkamp cone-beam algorithm using Ram-Lak filter was implemented for CBCT reconstruction images for skull and abdomen phantom. The distance from x-ray source to the gantry isocenter, the distance from the flat panel to the isocenter were calculated as 1,517.5 mm, 591.12 mm and the rotated angle of flat panel detector around x-ray beam axis was considered as 0.25°. It was observed that the blurring artifacts, originated from the rotation of the detector, in the reconstructed toomographs were significantly reduced after the geometrical calibration. The demonstrated CBCT images for the skull and abdomen phantoms are very promising. We performed the geometrical calibration of the large gantry rotation system with simple x-ray imaging devices for CBCT reconstruction. The CBCT system for proton therapy will be used as a main patient alignment system for image guided proton therapy.

KeywordsProton therapy, Cone-beam CT, Geometric calibration, Image guided radiotherapy