Range uncertainty reductions in proton therapy may lead to the feasibility of novel beam arrangements which improve organ-at-risk sparing.

Autor: Tattenberg S; Department of Medical Physics, Faculty of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Garching, Germany.; Division of Radiation Biophysics, Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA., Madden TM; Division of Radiation Biophysics, Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA., Bortfeld T; Division of Radiation Biophysics, Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA., Parodi K; Department of Medical Physics, Faculty of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Garching, Germany., Verburg J; Division of Radiation Biophysics, Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Medical physics [Med Phys] 2022 Jul; Vol. 49 (7), pp. 4693-4704. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 May 15.
DOI: 10.1002/mp.15644
Abstrakt: Purpose: In proton therapy, dose distributions are currently often conformed to organs at risk (OARs) using the less sharp dose fall-off at the lateral beam edge to reduce the effects of uncertainties in the in vivo proton range. However, range uncertainty reductions may make greater use of the sharper dose fall-off at the distal beam edge feasible, potentially improving OAR sparing. We quantified the benefits of such novel beam arrangements.
Methods: For each of 10 brain or skull base cases, five treatment plans robust to 2 mm setup and 0%-4% range uncertainty were created for the traditional clinical beam arrangement and a novel beam arrangement making greater use of the distal beam edge to conform the dose distribution to the brainstem. Metrics including the brainstem normal tissue complication probability (NTCP) with the endpoint of necrosis were determined for all plans and all setup and range uncertainty scenarios.
Results: For the traditional beam arrangement, reducing the range uncertainty from the current level of approximately 4% to a potentially achievable level of 1% reduced the brainstem NTCP by up to 0.9 percentage points in the nominal and up to 1.5 percentage points in the worst-case scenario. Switching to the novel beam arrangement at 1% range uncertainty improved these values by a factor of 2, that is, to 1.8 percentage points and 3.2 percentage points, respectively. The novel beam arrangement achieved a lower brainstem NTCP in all cases starting at a range uncertainty of 2%.
Conclusion: The benefits of novel beam arrangements may be of the same magnitude or even exceed the direct benefits of range uncertainty reductions. Indirect effects may therefore contribute markedly to the benefits of reducing proton range uncertainties.
(© 2022 The Authors. Medical Physics published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Association of Physicists in Medicine.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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