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SU‐F‐T‐113: Inherent Functional Dependence of Spinal Cord Doses of Variable Irradiated Volumes in Spine SBRT
Author(s) -
Ma L,
Braunstein S,
Chiu J,
Sahgal A
Publication year - 2016
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 - 10.1118/1.4956249
Subject(s) - spinal cord , nuclear medicine , medicine , irradiation , confidence interval , cord , effective dose (radiation) , equivalent dose , dosimetry , mathematics , surgery , physics , psychiatry , nuclear physics
Purpose: Spinal cord tolerance for SBRT has been recommended for the maximum point dose level or at irradiated volumes such as 0.35 mL or 10% of contoured volumes. In this study, we investigated an inherent functional relationship that associates these dose surrogates for irradiated spinal cord volumes of up to 3.0 mL. Methods: A hidden variable termed as Effective Dose Radius (EDR) was formulated based on a dose fall‐off model to correlate dose at irradiated spinal cord volumes ranging from 0 mL (point maximum) to 3.0 mL. A cohort of 15 spine SBRT cases was randomly selected to derive an EDR‐parameterized formula. The mean prescription dose for the studied cases was 21.0±8.0 Gy (range, 10–40Gy) delivered in 3±1 fractions with target volumes of 39.1 ± 70.6 mL. Linear regression and variance analysis were performed for the fitting parameters of variable EDR values. Results: No direct correlation was found between the dose at maximum point and doses at variable spinal cord volumes. For example, Pearson R 2 = 0.643 and R 2 = 0.491 were obtained when correlating the point maximum dose with the spinal cord dose at 1 mL and 3 mL, respectively. However, near perfect correlation (R 2 ≥0.99) was obtained when corresponding parameterized EDRs. Specifically, Pearson R 2 = 0.996 and R 2 = 0.990 were obtained when correlating EDR (maximum point dose) with EDR (dose at 1 mL) and EDR(dose at 3 mL), respectively. As a result, high confidence level look‐up tables were established to correlate spinal cord doses at the maximum point to any finite irradiated volumes. Conclusion: An inherent functional relationship was demonstrated for spine SBRT. Such a relationship unifies dose surrogates at variable cord volumes and proves that a single dose surrogate (e.g. point maximum dose) is mathematically sufficient in constraining the overall spinal cord dose tolerance for SBRT.