A preferred patient decubitus positioning for magnetic resonance image guided online adaptive radiation therapy of pancreatic cancer.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: In radiotherapy (RT) for pancreatic cancer, the dose to adjacent organs-at-risk (OAR) often limits the delivery of curative dose. This work aimed to find a body decubitus position that would lead to increased separation between the duodenum and pancreatic head. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Abdominal magnetic resonance images (MRI) of 11 healthy volunteers were acquired using a 1.5T MR-Linac for supine, left decubitus and right decubitus body positions. The geometry changes between different body positions were measured using Hausdorff Distance (HD) and overlap volume. RT plans were created on the MRIs. Commonly used dose-volume parameters (DVP), e.g., V40Gy - volume received at least 40 Gy, for OARs were compared for the three body positions. RESULTS: The average of maximum HD between the duodenum and pancreatic head for all the cases was 4.0 ± 3.1 mm for supine, 7.3 ± 4.4 mm for left and 3.3 ± 1.4 mm for right positions (P < 0.01). The DVPs of the duodenum (e.g., V20Gy, V45Gy) for the left position were lower than those for the supine and right positions (P < 0.01). The right decubitus led to the highest duodenum DVPs. On average, the highest dose escalation was increased from 69 ± 4 Gy to 74 ± 5 Gy (P = 0.002) if body position was changed from supine to left decubitus. CONCLUSION: The left decubitus increased the separation between duodenum and pancreas head, improving OAR sparing in RT for pancreatic cancer and allowing safer dose escalations to the tumor. The left decubitus positioning with proper immobilization could be adopted for MRI-guided adaptive RT.

Technical Note: Is bulk electron density assignment appropriate for MRI-only based treatment planning for lung cancer?

PURPOSE: MRI-based treatment planning in radiation therapy (RT) is prohibitive, in part, due to the lack of electron density (ED) information within the image. The dosimetric differences between MRI- and CT-based planning for intensity modulated RT (IMRT) of lung cancer were investigated to assess the appropriateness of bulk ED assignment. METHODS: Planning CTs acquired for six representative lung cancer patients were used to generate bulk ED IMRT plans. To avoid the effect of anatomic differences between CT and MRI, "simulated MRI-based plans" were generated by forcing the relative ED (rED) to water on CT-delineated structures using organ specific values from the ICRU Report 46 and using the mean rED value of the internal target volume (ITV) from the planning CT. The "simulated MRI-based plans" were generated using a research planning system (Monaco v5.09.07a, Elekta, AB) and employing Monte Carlo dose calculation. The following dose-volume-parameters (DVPs) were collected from both the "simulated MRI-based plans" and the original planning CT: D95 , the dose delivered to 95% of the ITV & planning target volume (PTV), D5 and V5 , the volume of normal lung irradiated ≥5 Gy. The percent point difference and relative dose difference were used for comparison with the CT based plan for V5 and D95 respectively. A total of five plans per patient were generated; three with the ITV rED (rEDITV ) = 1.06, 1.0 and the mean value from the planning CT while the lung rED (rEDlung ) was fixed at the ICRU value of 0.26 and two with rEDlung = 0.1 and 0.5 while the rEDITV was fixed to the mean value from the planning CT. RESULTS: Noticeable differences in the ITV and PTV DVPs were observed. Variations of the normal lung V5 can be as large as 9.6%. In some instances, varying the rEDITV between rEDmean and 1.06 resulted in D95 increases ranging from 3.9% to 6.3%. Bulk rED assignment on normal lung affected the DVPs of the ITV and PTV by 4.0-9.8% and 0.3-19.6% respectively. Dose volume histograms were presented for representative cases where the variations in the DVPs were found to be very large or very small. CONCLUSIONS: The commonly used bulk rED assignment in MRI-only based planning may not be appropriate for lung cancer. A voxel based method, e.g., synthetic CT generated from MRI data, is likely required for dosimetrically accurate MR-based planning for lung cancer.

Technical Note: Dose effects of 1.5 T transverse magnetic field on tissue interfaces in MRI-guided radiotherapy.

PURPOSE: The integration of MRI with a linear accelerator (MR-linac) offers great potential for high-precision delivery of radiation therapy (RT). However, the electron deflection resulting from the presence of a transverse magnetic field (TMF) can affect the dose distribution, particularly the electron return effect (ERE) at tissue interfaces. The purpose of the study is to investigate the dose effects of ERE at air-tissue and lung-tissue interfaces during intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) planning. METHODS: IMRT and volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) plans for representative pancreas, lung, breast, and head and neck (HN) cases were generated following commonly used clinical dose volume (DV) criteria. In each case, three types of plans were generated: (1) the original plan generated without a TMF; (2) the reconstructed plan generated by recalculating the original plan with the presence of a TMF of 1.5 T (no optimization); and (3) the optimized plan generated by a full optimization with TMF = 1.5 T. These plans were compared using a variety of DV parameters, including V100%, D95%, DHI [dose heterogeneity index: (D20%-D80%)/Dprescription], Dmax, and D1cc in OARs (organs at risk) and tissue interface. All the optimizations and calculations in this work were performed on static data. RESULTS: The dose recalculation under TMF showed the presence of the 1.5 T TMF can slightly reduce V100% and D95% for PTV, with the differences being less than 4% for all but one lung case studied. The TMF results in considerable increases in Dmax and D1cc on the skin in all cases, mostly between 10% and 35%. The changes in Dmax and D1cc on air cavity walls are dependent upon site, geometry, and size, with changes ranging up to 15%. The VMAT plans lead to much smaller dose effects from ERE compared to fixed-beam IMRT in pancreas case. When the TMF is considered in the plan optimization, the dose effects of the TMF at tissue interfaces (e.g., air-cavity wall, lung-tissue interfaces, skin) are significantly reduced in most cases. CONCLUSIONS: The doses on tissue interfaces can be significantly changed by the presence of a TMF during MR-guided RT when the magnetic field is not included in plan optimization. These changes can be substantially reduced or even eliminated during VMAT/IMRT optimization that specifically considers the TMF, without deteriorating overall plan quality.

MRI-based IMRT planning for MR-linac: comparison between CT- and MRI-based plans for pancreatic and prostate cancers.

The treatment planning in radiation therapy (RT) can be arranged to combine benefits of computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) together to maintain dose calculation accuracy and improved target delineation. Our aim is study the dosimetric impact of uniform relative electron density assignment on IMRT treatment planning with additional consideration given to the effect of a 1.5 T transverse magnetic field (TMF) in MR-Linac. A series of intensity modulated RT (IMRT) plans were generated for two representative tumor sites, pancreas and prostate, using CT and MRI datasets. Representative CT-based IMRT plans were generated to assess the impact of different electron density (ED) assignment on plan quality using CT without the presence of a 1.5 T TMF. The relative ED (rED) values used were taken from the ICRU report 46. Four types of rED assignment in the organs at risk (OARs), the planning target volumes (PTV) and in the non-specified tissue (NST) were considered. Dose was recalculated (no optimization) using a Monaco 5.09.07a research planning system employing Monte Carlo calculations with an option to include TMF. To investigate the dosimetric effect of different rED assignment, the dose-volume parameters (DVPs) obtained from these specific rED plans were compared to those obtained from the original plans based on CT. Overall, we found that uniform rED assignment results in differences in DVPs within 3% for the PTV and 5% for OAR. The presence of 1.5 T TMF on IMRT DVPs resulted in differences that were generally within 3% of the Gold St for both the pancreas and prostate. The combination of uniform rED assignment and TMF produced differences in DVPs that were within 4-5% of the Gold St. Larger differences in DVPs were observed for OARs on T2-based plans. The effects of using different rED assignments and the presence of 1.5 T TMF for pancreas and prostate IMRT plans are generally within 3% and 5% of PTV and OAR Gold St values. There are noticeable dosimetric differences between the CT- and MRI-based IMRT plans caused by a combination of anatomical changes between the two image acquisition times, uniform rED assignment and 1.5 T TMF.