Single-pulse X-ray Acoustic Computed Tomography Image Guided Precision Radiation Therapy

Abstract

Abstract Cancer has been and continues to be a leading cause of death globally. More than half of all cancer patients undergo ionizing radiation therapy and dosimetry is crucial to the success and improvement of these treatments - ensuring that an accurate radiation dose is delivered to the target location. Despite widespread clinical use, the delivered dose can only be planned and verified via simulations with phantoms, and an in-tumor, on-line dose verification is still unavailable after more than one-hundred years of clinical application. X-ray-induced acoustic computed tomography (XACT) has recently shown the potential for imaging the delivered radiation dose within the tumor. Prior XACT imaging systems require tens of averages to achieve reasonable images. Here, we demonstrate that our XACT signals can be detected for each individual X-ray pulse (4µs) with sub-mGy sensitivity from a clinical linear accelerator during radiotherapy. Single-pulse XACT imaging holds great potential for personalized precision radiotherapy.