Program Information

Magnetic Resonance Image-Guided Radiation Therapy Workflow: Initial Clinical Experience

O Green

O Green¹*, R Kashani¹ , L Santanam¹ , T Hand² , C Steele³ , J Victoria² , H Wooten¹ , H Li¹ , V Rodriguez¹ , Y Hu¹ , S Mutic¹ , (1) Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, (2) ViewRay, Inc., Oakwood Village, OH, (3) Barnes Jewish Hospital, St Louis, MO

Presentations

SU-E-J-181 Sunday 3:00PM - 6:00PM Room: Exhibit Hall

Purpose: The aims of this work are to describe the workflow and initial clinical experience treating patients with an MRI-guided radiotherapy (MR-IGRT) system.

Methods: Patient treatments with a novel MR-IGRT system started at our institution in mid-January. The system consists of an on-board 0.35-T MRI, with IMRT-capable delivery via doubly-focused MLCs on three ⁶⁰Co heads. In addition to volumetric MR-imaging, real-time planar imaging is performed during treatment. So far, eleven patients started treatment (six finished), ranging from bladder to lung SBRT. While the system is capable of online adaptive radiotherapy and gating, a conventional workflow was used to start, consisting of volumetric imaging for patient setup using visible tumor, evaluation of tumor motion outside of PTV on cine images, and real-time imaging. Workflow times were collected and evaluated to increase efficiency and evaluate feasibility of adding the adaptive and gating features while maintaining a reasonable patient through-put.

Results: For the first month, physicians attended every fraction to provide guidance on identifying the tumor and an acceptable level of positioning and anatomical deviation. Average total treatment times (including setup) were reduced from 55 to 45 min after physician presence was no longer required and the therapists had learned to align patients based on soft-tissue imaging. Presently, the source strengths were at half maximum (7.7K Ci each), therefore beam-on times will be reduced after source replacement. Current patient load is 10 per day, with increase to 25 anticipated in the near future.

Conclusion: On-board, real-time MRI-guided RT has been incorporated into clinical use. Treatment times were kept to reasonable lengths while including volumetric imaging, previews of tumor movement, and physician evaluation. Workflow and timing is being continuously evaluated to increase efficiency. In near future, adaptive and gating capabilities of the system will be implemented.




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