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Due to the enclosed chip evacuation space in deep hole drilling process, chips are accumulated in drill flutes as drilling depth increases, resulting in the increase of drilling torque and lead to drill breakage. Peck drilling is a widely used method to periodically alleviate the drilling torque caused by chip evacuation; the drilling depth in each step directly determines both drill life and machining efficiency. The existing drilling depth optimization methods face problems including low accuracy of the prediction model, the hysteresis of signal diagnosis, and onerous experiments. To overcome these problems, a novel drilling depth optimization method for peck drilling based on the iterative learning optimization is proposed. First, the chip evacuation torque coefficients (CETCs) are introduced into the chip evacuation torque model to simplify the model for learning. Then, the effect of chip removal process in peck drilling on drilling depth is analyzed. The extended depth coefficient by chip removal (EDCbCR) is introduced to develop the relationship between the extended depth in each drilling step and drilling depth. On the foundation of the modeling above, an iterative learning method for drilling depth optimization in peck drilling is developed, in which a modified Newton's method is proposed to maximize machining efficiency and avoid drill breakage. In experiments with different cutting parameters, the effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by comparing the optimized and measured results. The results show that the presented learning method is able to obtain the maximum drilling depth accurately with the error less than 10%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: To investigate the feasibility and benefits of a modified adaptive radiotherapy (ART) by replanning in the initial CT (iCT) with new contours from a repeat CT (rCT) based on CT-CT image fusion for nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) patients underwent volumetric modulated arc radiotherapy (VMAT).Materials and Methods: Nine NPC patients underwent VMAT treatment with a rCT at 23rd fraction were enrolled in this study. Dosimetric differences for replanning VMAT plans in the iCT and in the rCT were compared. Volumetric and dosimetric changes of gross tumor volume (GTV) and organs at risk (OARs) of this modified ART were also investigated.Results: No dosimetric differences between replanning in the iCT and in the rCT were observed. The average volume of GTV decreased from 78.83 ± 38.42 cm3 in the iCT to 71.44 ± 37.46 cm3 in the rCT, but with no significant difference (p = 0.42).The average volume of the left and right parotid decreased from 19.91 ± 4.89 cm3 and 21.58 ± 6.16 cm3 in the iCT to 11.80 ± 2.79 cm3 and 13.29 ± 4.17 cm3 in the rCT (both p < 0.01), respectively. The volume of other OARs did not shrink very much. No significant differences on PTVGTV and PTVCTV coverage were observed for replanning with this modified ART. Compared to the initial plans, the average mean dose of the left and right parotid after re-optimization were decreased by 62.5 cGy (p = 0.05) and 67.3 cGy (p = 0.02), respectively, and the V5 (the volume receiving 5 Gy) of the left and right parotids were decreased by 7.8% (p = 0.01) and 11.2% (p = 0.001), respectively. There was no significant difference on the dose delivered to other OARs.Conclusion: Patients with NPC undergoing VMAT have significant anatomic and dosimetric changes to parotids. Repeat CT as an anatomic changes reference and re-optimization in the iCT based on CT-CT image fusion was accurate enough to identify the volume changes and to ensure safe dose to parotids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic myocardial perfusion CT (DMP-CT) imaging provides quantitative functional information for diagnosis and risk stratification of coronary artery disease by calculating myocardial perfusion hemodynamic parameter (MPHP) maps. However, the level of radiation delivered by dynamic sequential scan protocol can be potentially high. The purpose of this work is to develop a pre-contrast normal-dose scan induced structure tensor total variation regularization based on the penalized weighted least-squares (PWLS) criteria to improve the image quality of DMP-CT with a low-mAs CT acquisition. For simplicity, the present approach was termed as ‘PWLS-ndiSTV’. Specifically, the ndiSTV regularization takes into account the spatial-temporal structure information of DMP-CT data and further exploits the higher order derivatives of the objective images to enhance denoising performance. Subsequently, an effective optimization algorithm based on the split-Bregman approach was adopted to minimize the associative objective function. Evaluations with modified dynamic XCAT phantom and preclinical porcine datasets have demonstrated that the proposed PWLS-ndiSTV approach can achieve promising gains over other existing approaches in terms of noise-induced artifacts mitigation, edge details preservation, and accurate MPHP maps calculation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate the dosimetric advantages of volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) in the treatment of intraocular cancer by comparing it directly with three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy (CRT) and intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT).Methods: CRT plan, 7f-IMRT plan, and one-arc VMAT plan were generated for 14 intraocular cancer patients. Dosimetric and biological quality indices for target volume and organs at risks (OARs) were evaluated and compared.Results: The target coverage presented by V95 for CRT, IMRT and VMAT were 95.02% ± 0.67%, 95.51% ± 2.25%, and 95.92% ± 3.05%, respectively. The homogeneity index (HI) for CRT, IMRT and VMAT were 0.15 ± 0.05, 0.23 ± 0.05, and 0.23 ± 0.06, respectively. IMRT and VMAT greatly decreased the dose to ipsilateral lens compared with CRT with a D1 of 2972.66 ± 1407.12 cGy, 3317.82 ± 915.28 cGy and 4809.54 ± 524.60 cGy for IMRT, VMAT and CRT, respectively. Similar results were observed for ipsilateral eyeballs. IMRT and VMAT also spared better on brainstem, optical nerves and optical chiasm compared CRT. However, CRT achieved lower dose to the eyeballs compared with IMRT and VMAT. VMAT and IMRT showed mixed results on target coverage and OAR sparing. The average MUs and delivery time of IMRT and VMAT were 531.25 ± 81.21 vs. 400.99 ± 61.49 and 5.05 ± 0.53 vs.1.71 ± 0.69 min, respectively.Conclusions: Although no clear distinction on PTV coverage among CRT, IMRT and VMAT plans was observed in the treatment of intraocular cancer, VMAT and IMRT achieved better homogeneity and conformity for target volume, and delivered fewer doses to ipsilateral lens and eyeballs compared with CRT. However, VMAT and IMRT increased the low dose volume to the contralateral OARs. Although VMAT and IMRT showed mixed results on target coverage and OAR sparing, VMAT decreased MU and delivery time significantly compared with IMRT. VMAT is a promising and feasible external beam radiotherapy technique in the treatment of intraocular cancer patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thermal, water and electrochemical stability of Cu-based metal organic frameworks (Cu-MOFs) confined in macroporous carbon (MPC) hybrids has been investigated. Thermogravimetric analyses, X-Ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and cyclic voltammetry were employed to confirm the stability of pure Cu-MOFs, MPC, and Cu-MOFs-MPC. As compared to pure Cu-MOFs, the porous composite materials of MPC and Cu-MOFs interact and seem to form new materials having homogenous structure and chemistry, which show structural stability in aqueous media and electrochemical stability in phosphate buffer solution (PBS pH 7.4). The detection of ascorbic acid and hemoglobin is performed as an electrochemical probe, indicating Cu-MOFs-MPC holds great promise for the design of electrochemical sensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose To investigate the feasibility of constant dose rate volumetric modulated arc therapy (CDRVMAT) in the treatment of nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) patients and to introduce rotational arc radiotherapy for linacs incapable of dose rate variation. Materials and methods Twelve NPC patients with various stages treated previously using variable dose rate (VDR) VMAT were enrolled in this study. CDR-VMAT, VDR-VMAT and mutlicriteria optimization (MCO) VMAT plans were generated for each patient on RayStation treatment planning system with identical objective functions and the dosimetric differences among these three planning schemes were evaluated and compared. Non dosimetric parameters of optimization time, delivery time and delivery accuracy were also evaluated. Results The planning target volume of clinical target volume (PTV-CTV) coverage of CDR-VMAT was a bit inferior to those of VDR- and MCO-VMAT. The V93 (p = 0.01) and V95 (percent volume covered by isodose line) (p = 0.04) for CDR-VMAT, VDR-VMAT and MCO-VMAT were 98.74% ± 0.31%, 99.76% ± 0.16%, 99.38% ± 0.43%, and 98.40% ± 0.48%, 99.53% ± 0.28%, 99.07% ± 0.52%, respectively.. However, the CDR-VMAT showed a better dose homogeneity index (HI) (p = 0.01) in PTV-CTV. No significant difference in other target coverage parameters was observed. There was no significant difference in OAR sparing among these three planning schemes except for a higher maximum dose (Dmax) on the brainstem for CDR-VMAT. The brainstem Dmax of CDR-VMAT, VDR-VMAT and MCOVMAT were 54.26 ± 3.21 Gy, 52.19 ± 1.65 Gy, and 52.79 ± 4.77 Gy, respectively. The average delivery time (p < 0.01) and the average percent γ passing rates (p = 0.02) of CDRVMAT, VDR-VMAT and MCO-VMAT were 7.01 ± 0.43 min, 4.75 ± 0.07 min, 4.01 ± 0.28 min, and 95.75% ± 2.57%, 97.65% ± 1.45%, 97.36% ± 2.45%, respectively. Conclusion CDR-VMAT offers an additional option of rotational arc radiotherapy for linacs incapable of dose rate variation with a lower initial cost. Its plan quality was acceptable but should be thoroughly checked compared with VDR-VMAT and MCO-VMAT in the treatment of NPC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To investigate the anatomic and dosimetric variations of volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) in the treatment of nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) patients based on weekly cone beam CT (CBCT). Materials and methods Ten NPC patients treated by VMAT with weekly CBCT for setup corrections were reviewed retrospectively. Deformed volumes of targets and organs at risk (OARs) in the CBCT were compared with those in the planning CT. Delivered doses were recalculated based on weekly CBCT and compared with the planned doses. Results No significant volumetric changes on targets, brainstem, and spinal cord were observed. The average volumes of right and left parotid measured from the fifth CBCT were about 4.4 and 4.5 cm³ less than those from the first CBCT, respectively. There were no significant dose differences between average planned and delivered doses for targets, brainstem and spinal cord. For right parotid, the delivered mean dose was 10.5 cGy higher (p = 0.004) than the planned value per fraction, and the V26 and V32 increased by 7.5% (p = 0.002) and 7.4% (p = 0.01), respectively. For the left parotid, the D50 (dose to the 50% volume) was 8.8 cGy higher (p = 0.03) than the planned values per fraction, and the V26 increased by 8.8% (p = 0.002). Conclusion Weekly CBCTs were applied directly to study the continuous volume changes and resulting dosimetric variations of targets and OARs for NPC patients undergoing VMAT. Significant volumetric and dosimetric variations were observed for parotids. Replanning after 30 Gy will benefit the protection on parotids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radiation-associated toxicities due to sophisticated ocular anatomy and shape variability of organs at risk (OARs) are major concerns during external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) of patients with intraocular cancer. A novel two-step image registration strategy between optical coherence tomography (OCT) and computed tomography (CT) images was proposed and validated to precisely localize the target in the EBRT of patients with intraocular cancer. Specifically, multiple features from OCT and CT images were extracted automatically, then spatial transformation based on thin-plate spline function was performed iteratively to achieve feature alignment between the CT and OCT images. Finally, an exclusive OR (XOR) algorithm was applied for precise 3D registration using a 3D-mesh model generated from OCT and CT volumes. The accuracy of the proposed novel registration strategy was validated and tested in a schematic-eye phantom with an artificially introduced tumor and in ten patients with confirmed primary and/or secondary intraocular cancer. There was an average registration error and computational time of 0.21  ±  0.05° and 259  ±  5 s, together with an average Dice similarity coefficient and Hausdorff distance of 88.4  ±  0.65 and 0.89  ±  0.09, respectively. The preliminary experimental results demonstrated that the proposed novel strategy to overcome current limitations on eye modeling and to localize precisely the tumor target during EBRT of intraocular cancer is promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]