A parametrization of the CT number of a substance and its use for stoichiometric calibration

Abstract

A method to carry out stoichiometric calibrations of CT scanners employed in radiotherapy treatment planning is proposed. The method is based on a simple parametrization of the CT number of a substance, which involves only two variables to describe the substance (electron density and one effective atomic number) and one parameter to describe the beam. The method was tested experimentally on a group of beams. A set of no tissue-like substances of known densities and elemental compositions were employed as calibrators. CT number-to-density curves (RED curves) were calculated with the proposed parametrization and compared to those measured with a commercial density phantom. Differences between the electron densities assigned by the calculated RED curves and the measured ones were in the range 0.009-0.019 (RMS). The proposed method may be employed to carry out accurate stoichiometric calibrations by using only one suitable substance as calibrator, not necessarily tissue-like.