Program Information

The Development of An MR Accelerator-Enabled Planning-To-Delivery Technique for Stereotactic Palliative Radiotherapy Treatment of Spinal Metastases

S J Hoogcarspel*, C Kontaxis , J M van der Velden , G H Bol , M van Vulpen , J J W Lagendijk , B W Raaymakers , University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, Utrecht

Presentations

SU-C-17A-7 Sunday 1:00PM - 1:55PM Room: 17A

Purpose: To develop an MR accelerator-enabled online planning-to-delivery technique for stereotactic palliative radiotherapy treatment of spinal metastases. The technical challenges include; automated stereotactic treatment planning, online MR-based dose calculation and MR guidance during treatment.

Methods: Using the CT data of 20 patients previously treated at our institution, a class solution for automated treatment planning for spinal bone metastases was created. For accurate dose simulation right before treatment, we fused geometrically correct online MR data with pre-treatment CT data of the target volume (TV). For target tracking during treatment, a dynamic T2-weighted TSE MR sequence was developed. An in house developed GPU based IMRT optimization and dose calculation algorithm was used for fast treatment planning and simulation. An automatically generated treatment plan developed with this treatment planning system was irradiated on a clinical 6 MV linear accelerator and evaluated using a Delta4 dosimeter.

Results: The automated treatment planning method yielded clinically viable plans for all patients. The MR-CT fusion based dose calculation accuracy was within 2% as compared to calculations performed with original CT data. The dynamic T2-weighted TSE MR Sequence was able to provide an update of the anatomical location of the TV every 10 seconds. Dose calculation and optimization of the automatically generated treatment plans using only one GPU took on average 8 minutes. The Delta4 measurement of the irradiated plan agreed with the dose calculation with a 3%/3mm gamma pass rate of 86.4%.

Conclusions: The development of an MR accelerator-enabled planning-to-delivery technique for stereotactic palliative radiotherapy treatment of spinal metastases was presented. Future work will involve developing an intra-fraction motion adaptation strategy, MR-only dose calculation, radiotherapy quality-assurance in a magnetic field, and streamlining the entire treatment process on an MR accelerator.

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