Research Organization Document

Phase I
In the lecture from this week, you learned about the first few essential steps to a successful
research project.
1. Select a philosophical foundation
2. Investigate a topic
a. Develop a research PROBLEM
3. Find a supporting problem/develop a theory base (literature review)
4. Develop scientific question/query and select a research design
This document will help you apply these essential steps to your capstone project.
1. What philosophical foundation are you pursuing? Why?
- Logical Positivism Philosophical Foundation
- We will be taking precise measurements and analyzing raw data that is unbiased

2. What is your topic idea?

- Through the process of setting up patients for radiation treatments, there are
unfortunately positional uncertainty shifts that occur. These uncertainties create
differences with the dose distribution which could lead to underdosing of the
target volumes and/or overdosing the OARs. One such treatment that could be
affected by these is the DIBH left breast treatment. If patients were shifted over
by just a couple of millimeters in the setup, this could change their entire
treatment. Due to this, tolerances may need to be adjusted and possibly
tightened to reduce the chances of targets being missed or OARs being
overdosed.

3. Find a supporting problem/develop a theory base.

- The problem is that patient positioning errors could be shifting the isocenter
resulting in an unplanned increase in cardiac dose and decreased evaluation
planning target volume (PTV Eval) dose coverage for left-sided breast patients
treated with DIBH.
- The purpose of this study is to compare heart dose and breast PTV Eval coverage
for DIBH left breast patient plans using the ‘plan uncertainty’ feature in Eclipse
to determine whether adjustments are necessary for set up threshold tolerances.

4. What are your supporting questions?

- 1. What are the specific dose tolerances that need to be exceeded for each OAR in
order to warrant a change in set up tolerance?
- 2. What possible adverse effects may result from the OAR receiving a higher dose
due to the initial set up tolerance?
 - 3. How will the patient setup need to be improved to account for potential set up
tolerance reduction?
- 4. What kind of education or discussion needs to happen with the radiation
therapists and other clinical staff should the set up tolerances be reduced?

5. What type of research design are you interested in pursuing with this topic?
- Experimental/Quantitative Design.