Open AccessMonte Carlo evaluation of target dose coverage in lung stereotactic body radiation therapy with flattening filter-free beams
Author(s) -
Oleg N Vassiliev,
Christine B. Peterson,
Joe Y. Chang,
Radhe Mohan
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of radiotherapy in practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.159
H-Index - 14
eISSN - 1467-1131
pISSN - 1460-3969
DOI - 10.1017/s1460396920000886
Subject(s) - monte carlo method , radiation treatment planning , nuclear medicine , medicine , image guided radiation therapy , radiation therapy , medical physics , radiology , mathematics , statistics
Previous studies showed that replacing conventional flattened beams (FF) with flattening filter-free (FFF) beams improves the therapeutic ratio in lung stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT), but these findings could have been impacted by dose calculation uncertainties caused by the heterogeneity of the thoracic anatomy and by respiratory motion, which were particularly high for target coverage. In this study, we minimized such uncertainties by calculating doses using high-spatial-resolution Monte Carlo and four-dimensional computed tomography (4DCT) images. We aimed to evaluate more reliably the benefits of using FFF beams for lung SBRT.