Potential of 3D printing technologies for fabrication of electron bolus and proton compensators

In electron and proton radiotherapy, applications of patient‐specific electron bolus or proton compensators during radiation treatments are often necessary to accommodate patient body surface irregularities, tissue inhomogeneity, and variations in PTV depths to achieve desired dose distributions. Em...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of applied clinical medical physics 2015-05, Vol.16 (3), p.90-98
Main Authors: Zou, Wei, Fisher, Ted, Zhang, Miao, Kim, Leonard, Chen, Ting, Narra, Venkat, Swann, Beth, Singh, Rachana, Siderit, Richard, Yin, Lingshu, Teo, Boon‐keng Kevin, Mckenna, Michael, McDonough, James, Ning, Yue J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
3-D printers
3D printing
Design
electron bolus
Electrons
Equipment Design
Equipment Failure Analysis
Feasibility Studies
Printed materials
Printing, Three-Dimensional - instrumentation
proton compensator
Protons
Radiation Oncology Physics
Radiation therapy
Radiotherapy, Conformal - instrumentation
Rapid prototyping
Scattering, Radiation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In electron and proton radiotherapy, applications of patient‐specific electron bolus or proton compensators during radiation treatments are often necessary to accommodate patient body surface irregularities, tissue inhomogeneity, and variations in PTV depths to achieve desired dose distributions. Emerging 3D printing technologies provide alternative fabrication methods for these bolus and compensators. This study investigated the potential of utilizing 3D printing technologies for the fabrication of the electron bolus and proton compensators. Two printing technologies, fused deposition modeling (FDM) and selective laser sintering (SLS), and two printing materials, PLA and polyamide, were investigated. Samples were printed and characterized with CT scan and under electron and proton beams. In addition, a software package was developed to convert electron bolus and proton compensator designs to printable Standard Tessellation Language file format. A phantom scalp electron bolus was printed with FDM technology with PLA material. The HU of the printed electron bolus was 106.5±15.2. A prostate patient proton compensator was printed with SLS technology and polyamide material with −70.1±8.1 HU. The profiles of the electron bolus and proton compensator were compared with the original designs. The average over all the CT slices of the largest Euclidean distance between the design and the fabricated bolus on each CT slice was found to be 0.84±0.45 mm and for the compensator to be 0.40±0.42 mm. It is recommended that the properties of specific 3D printed objects are understood before being applied to radiotherapy treatments. PACS number: 81.40
ISSN:1526-9914
1526-9914
DOI:10.1120/jacmp.v16i3.4959