Program Information
Exploiting Tumor Shrinkage in Split-Course Radiotherapy
J Unkelbach1*, D Craft1 , T Hong1 , D Papp1 , J Ramakrishnan2 , E Salari3 , J Wolfgang1 , T Bortfeld1 , (1) Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, (2) University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, (3) Wichita State University, Wichita, KS
Presentations
TH-E-BRF-1 Thursday 1:00PM - 2:50PM Room: Ballroom FPurpose: In split-course radiotherapy, a patient is treated in several stages separated by weeks or months. This regimen has been motivated by radiobiological considerations. However, using modern image-guidance, it also provides an approach to reduce normal tissue dose by exploiting tumor shrinkage. In this work, we consider the optimal design of split-course treatments, motivated by the clinical management of large liver tumors for which normal liver dose constraints prohibit the administration of an ablative radiation dose in a single treatment.
Methods: We introduce a dynamic tumor model that incorporates three factors: radiation induced cell kill, tumor shrinkage, and tumor cell repopulation. The design of split-course radiotherapy is formulated as a mathematical optimization problem in which the total dose to the liver is minimized, subject to delivering the prescribed dose to the tumor. Based on the model, we gain insight into the optimal administration of radiation over time, i.e. the optimal treatment gaps and dose levels.
Results: We analyze treatments consisting of two stages in detail. The analysis confirms the intuition that the second stage should be delivered just before the tumor size reaches a minimum and repopulation overcompensates shrinking. Furthermore, it was found that, for a large range of model parameters, approximately one third of the dose should be delivered in the first stage. The projected benefit of split-course treatments in terms of liver sparing depends on model assumptions. However, the model predicts large liver dose reductions by more than a factor of two for plausible model parameters.
Conclusion: The analysis of the tumor model suggests that substantial reduction in normal tissue dose can be achieved by exploiting tumor shrinkage via an optimal design of multi-stage treatments. This suggests taking a fresh look at split-course radiotherapy for selected disease sites where substantial tumor regression translates into reduced target volumes.
Contact Email: