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SU‐E‐J‐116: Uncertainties Associated with Dose Summation of High‐Dose Rate Brachytherapy and Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy for Gynecological Cases
Author(s) -
Kauweloa K,
Bergamo A,
Gutierrez A,
Stathakis S,
Mavroidis P,
Papanikolaou N,
Kirby N
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.4924203
Subject(s) - radiation therapy , brachytherapy , nuclear medicine , dose volume histogram , dosimetry , medicine , radiation treatment planning , cumulative dose , radiation oncologist , rectum , histogram , hounsfield scale , image registration , radiology , computer science , artificial intelligence , image (mathematics) , computed tomography , surgery
Purpose: Determining the cumulative dose distribution (CDD) for gynecological patients treated with both high‐dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy and intensity‐modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) is challenging. The purpose of this work is to study the uncertainty of performing this with a structure‐guided deformable (SGD) approach in Velocity. Methods: For SGD, the Hounsfield units inside specified contours are overridden to set uniform values. Deformable image registration (DIR) is the run on these process images, which forces the DIR to focus on these contour boundaries. 18 gynecological cancer patients were used in this study. The original bladder and rectum planning contours for these patients were used to drive the SGD. A second set of contours were made of the bladder by the same person with the intent of carefully making them completely consistent with each other. This second set was utilized to evaluate the spatial accuracy of the SGD. The determined spatial accuracy was then multiplied by the local dose gradient to determine a dose uncertainty associated with the SGD dose warping. The normal tissue complication probability (NTCP) was then calculated for each dose volume histogram (DVH) that included four different probabilistic uncertainties associated with the spatial errors (e.g., 68.3% and 95.4%). Results: The NTCPs for each DVH (e.g., NTCP_−95.4%, NTCP_−68.3%, NTCP_68.3%, NTCP_95.4%) differed amongst patients. All patients had an NTCP_−95.4% close to 0%, while NTCP_95.4% ranged from 0.67% to 100%. Nine patients had an NTCP_−95.4% less than 50% while the remaining nine patients had NTCP_95.4% greater than 50%. Conclusion: The uncertainty associated with this CDD technique renders a large NTCP uncertainty. Thus, it is currently not practical for clinical use. The two ways to improve this would be to use more precise contours to drive the SGD and to use a more accurate DIR algorithm.