Development of whole-body representation and dose calculation in a commercial treatment planning system.

For the epidemiological evaluation of long-term side effects of radiotherapy patients, it is important to know the doses to organs and tissues everywhere in the patient. Computed tomography (CT) images of the patients which contain the anatomical information are sometimes available for each treated patient. However, the available CT scans usually cover only the treated volume of the patient including the target and surrounding anatomy. To overcome this limitation, in this work we describe the development of a software tool using the Varian Eclipse Scripting API for extending a partial-body CT to a whole-body representation in the treatment planning system for dose calculation. The whole-body representation is created by fusing the partial-body CT with a similarly sized whole-body computational phantom selected from a library containing 64 phantoms of different heights, weights, and genders. The out-of-field dose is calculated with analytical models from the literature and merged with the treatment planning system-calculated dose. To test the method, the out-of-field dose distributions on the computational phantoms were compared to dose calculations on whole-body patient CTs. The mean doses, D2% and D98% were compared in 26 organs and tissues for 14 different treatment plans in 5 patients using 3D-CRT, IMRT, VMAT, coplanar and non-coplanar techniques. From these comparisons we found that mean relative differences between organ doses ranged from -10% and +20% with standard deviations of up to 40%. The developed method will help epidemiologists and researchers estimate organ doses outside the treated volume when only limited treatment planning CT information is available.

TLD measurements and Monte Carlo calculations of head and neck organ and effective doses for cone beam computed tomography using 3D Accuitomo 170.

OBJECTIVES: In dentistry, the use of cone beam CT has steadily increased over the last few years. The aim of this study was to measure organ doses and to perform dose calculations based on Monte Carlo (MC) simulations to work out a basis for full three-dimensional (3D) dose calculations for any patient examination performed with the machine used in this study. METHODS: TLD-100 LiF detectors were placed at 71 measurement positions on the surface and within a RT-Humanoid phantom to cover all relevant radiosensitive organs and tissues. Three examinations with different protocols were performed with the 3D Accuitomo® and dose calculations with MC simulations were carried out for the same three protocols using the EGSnrc MC transport code system. RESULTS: Field of views of 140 × 100, 80 × 50 and 40 × 40 mm2 were selected, the mean organ doses were measured as 5.2, 2.75 and 1.5 mGy and the effective doses were determined as 250, 97 and 48 µSv. For the MC simulation of organ doses and the thermoluminescent dosemeter measurements, an overall agreement within ±10.1% (two standard deviations) was achieved. The measured dose values for 3D Accuitomo® were about a factor 2 lower when compared with conventional CT examinations. CONCLUSIONS: Reliable results for the organ doses as well as effective dose values were achieved with thermoluminescent dosemeter measurements in the RT-Humanoid phantom. This study provides the basis for the application of MC simulations for further dose determinations of cone beam CT machines. The MC calculation may therefore be a valuable tool to support the dentists in the evaluation of the trade-off between additional information that may be relevant to the choice of therapy and the additional dose given to the patient.

The dose-response relationship for cardiovascular disease is not necessarily linear.

The probability for a complication after radiotherapy is usually a function of dose and volume in the organ or tissue of interest. In most epidemiological studies the risk for a complication is stratified in terms of dose, but not irradiated volume. We show that the obtained risk cannot generally be applied to radiotherapy patients.The epidemiological data of Darby et al. (N Engl J Med 368:2527, 2013) who found a linear relationship between the excess relative risk of major coronary events as function of mean heart dose in patients treated with tangential breast irradiation are analyzed. We have used the relative seriality model for a partly irradiated heart ("a lot to a little") which models radiation therapy using two tangential fields. The relative seriality model was then used to predict NTCP of cardiovascular disease for a homogenously irradiated heart ("a little to a lot"). The relative seriality model was fitted to the data of Darby et al. (N Engl J Med 368:2527, 2013) for tangential breast irradiation. For the situation "a little to a lot" it was found that the dose-response relationship is sigmoidal and contradicts the findings of Darby et al. (N Engl J Med 368:2527, 2013). It was shown in this work that epidemiological studies which predict a linear dose-response relationship for cardiovascular disease can be reproduced by bio-physical models for normal tissue complication. For irradiation situations which were not included in the epidemiological studies, e.g. a homogenous irradiation of the heart ("a little to a lot") the dose-response curve can be different. This could have consequences whether or not IMRT should be used for treating breast cancer. We believe that the results of epidemiological studies should not be generally used to predict normal tissue complications. It is better to use such data to optimize bio-physical models which can then be applied (with caution) to general treatment situations.