Research Organization Document

Phase I
The Research Basics lecture identified the following steps in beginning the research
process:
1. Select a philosophical foundation
2. Determine group interest
3. Research your interests and develop a research problem
4. Find a supporting problem/develop a theory base (literature review)
5. Develop scientific question/query and select a research design
In the discussion forum, you should have narrowed down your interests into a single topic.
This document will help you apply these essential steps to your capstone project topic.
1. What philosophical foundation are you pursuing? Why?
Logical Positivism. We will be using retrospective data to evaluate the likelihood of creating
treatment plans using CBCTs that were captured with HyperSight compared to the original
CT sim.
2. What is your group interest? (This would be the high-level idea that you
listed/discussed in the discussion forum).
Replanning on CBCTs- With the help of HyperSight CBCTs, we will be able to create
treatment plans using iCBCTs and compare them to the original treatment plan that was
created on the CT sim data set.
3. Find a problem/develop a theory base. These concepts are combined because
both concepts support the idea that you need to determine what’s out there on your
particular interest/topic.
a. What is the research problem? Your working problem statements below.
The problem is standard FDK CBCT scans are not high enough quality compared to CT sim
images so you cannot create adaptive treatment plans from them.
b. What knowledge exists on your interests and the problems you’ve come
up with?
i. Conduct a literature review on your topics. If You’ve identified a
potential high-level problem to solve but how do you know that
someone else hasn’t already researched this problem? This is the
purpose of a literature review. You need to find peer-reviewed
scholarly articles that support the need for your proposed research.
The pertinent articles that you find will be used to confirm or refute
the results of your study so the research must be current (5 years old
at the most). The only circumstance in which older articles should be
used is in the case of task group reports, QUANTEC or similar
monumental articles. List the most pertinent articles that you intend
 to use to support your research in AMA formatting in this document.
Refer to this list often. (Note: you will be providing summaries of
these articles in a later assignment so it’s a good idea to hold on to
notes about each article now).
Washio H, Ohira S, Funama Y, et al. Dose Reduction and Low-Contrast Detectability Using
Iterative CBCT Reconstruction Algorithm for Radiotherapy. Technol Cancer Res Treat.
2022;21:15330338211067312. doi:10.1177/15330338211067312

Kim E, Park YK, Zhao T, et al. Image quality characterization of an ultra-high-speed

kilovoltage cone-beam computed tomography imaging system on an O-ring linear
accelerator. J Appl Clin Med Phys. Published online April 4, 2024. doi:10.1002/acm2.14337

Washio H, Ohira S, Funama Y, et al. Accuracy of dose calculation on iterative CBCT for head
and neck radiotherapy. Phys Med. 2021;86:106-112. doi:10.1016/j.ejmp.2021.05.027

4. What is the purpose of your study? This naturally falls in-line with the other
questions as you complete your literature review. What do you hope to find out
after you complete this research? What is the aim? These are all questions you
should ask yourselves.
The pupose of the study is to determine if head and neck CBCTs reconstructed with iCBCT
and iCBCT with MAR are comparable to CT sim datasets in terms of adaptive planning.
5. What are your supporting questions? Develop some key questions that your
reader will know the answer to after reading your research paper that support your
research problem. These questions should require elaboration (a simply stated
yes/no answer question is not permitted). For example:
a. Research Question: Where should our next coffee shop location be?
b. Supporting Questions: What customer base are we seeking?
• What is the difference between planning on CBCTs reconstructed with FDK
reconstruction and CBCTs reconstructed with iCBCT?
• Can you create adaptive treatment plans from iCBCT and iCBCT MAR scans?
• Is there a need for adaptive treatment planning in head and neck standard
fractionation treatment courses?

6. What type of research design are you interested in pursuing with this topic?
Some very basic information on each type (experimental/quantitative or
naturalistic/qualitative) was provided at the end of this week’s lecture. You will get
more into the research design in the coming weeks but you should determine which
design you are going to pursue now.
This will be an experimental retrospective study.
Submit this document to the appropriate assignment area when instructed.