Program Information
Determination of Plan Robustness for Systematic Setup Errors Using Trilinear Interpolation
MK Fix*, W Volken, D Frei, D Terribilini, A Dal Pra, M Schmuecking, P Manser, Division of Medical Radiation Physics and Department of Radiation Oncology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, and University of Bern, Switzerland
Presentations
SU-F-BRD-3 Sunday 4:00PM - 6:00PM Room: Ballroom DPurpose: Treatment plan evaluations in radiotherapy are currently ignoring the dosimetric impact of setup uncertainties. The determination of the robustness for systematic errors is rather computational intensive. This work investigates interpolation schemes to quantify the robustness of treatment plans for systematic errors in terms of efficiency and accuracy.
Methods: The impact of systematic errors on dose distributions for patient treatment plans is determined by using the Swiss Monte Carlo Plan (SMCP). Errors in all translational directions are considered, ranging from -3 to +3 mm in mm steps. For each systematic error a full MC dose calculation is performed leading to 343 dose calculations, used as benchmarks. The interpolation uses only a subset of the 343 calculations, namely 9, 15 or 27, and determines all dose distributions by trilinear interpolation. This procedure is applied for a prostate and a head and neck case using Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy with 2 arcs. The relative differences of the dose volume histograms (DVHs) of the target and the organs at risks are compared. Finally, the interpolation schemes are used to compare robustness of 4- versus 2-arcs in the head and neck treatment plan.
Results: Relative local differences of the DVHs increase for decreasing number of dose calculations used in the interpolation. The mean deviations are <1%, 3.5% and 6.5% for a subset of 27, 15 and 9 used dose calculations, respectively. Thereby the dose computation times are reduced by factors of 13, 25 and 43, respectively. The comparison of the 4- versus 2-arcs plan shows a decrease in robustness; however, this is outweighed by the dosimetric improvements.
Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that the use of trilinear interpolation to determine the robustness of treatment plans can remarkably reduce the number of dose calculations. This work was supported by Varian Medical Systems.
Funding Support, Disclosures, and Conflict of Interest: This work was supported by Varian Medical Systems
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