Date/Time
Date(s) - 07/13/2015
9:00 am

Since the majority of patients diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (HL) are either children or young adults, patients treated with radiotherapy may survive many years after initial diagnosis. Long-term survival of patients coupled with the large field sizes used during typical radiation treatments provides a unique opportunity to study secondary malignancies following radiation exposures. Patients treated for HL at the University of Florida (UF), who have 10 to 40 years of potential medical record follow-up, are currently investigated for late radiation effects. Mean absorbed doses to critical organs are needed to develop dose effect relationships for the UF HL cohort. In this study, patient medical records are used to create computational anatomic models of these patients and recreate historical treatments using Monte Carlo transport. From these simulations, estimates of mean organ doses for each patient over the course of treatment will be determined. By comparing the risk per unit dose of the UF HL cohort to existing radiation exposure risk models, we hope to challenge or validate these models.
This research study will be performed along three specific aims, listed in the order of their associated study goals. First, the accuracy and precision of historical organ dose reconstructions of HL patients using a library of hybrid computational phantoms as benchmarked against a series of 30 patient-specific phantom models from modern-day CT image sets will be assessed. Secondly, a workflow for the organ dose reconstructions will be developed and applied to the UF HL cohort with 40 years of potential medical record follow-up. Finally, existing risk projection models will be assessed by determining the secondary cancer and excess cardiovascular disease risk from the UF HL cohort.