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Dosimetric Impact of Patient Roll Variability in Peripheral-Lung SBRT

B Casto*, J Ying , L Ku , Salem Cancer Institute, Salem, Oregon

Presentations

SU-E-J-56 Sunday 3:00PM - 6:00PM Room: Exhibit Hall

Purpose: Positional variation about the patient longitudinal axis may introduce deleterious effects to clinical treatment plans, the effects of which are exacerbated by hypo-fractionated treatment regimens. Our goal is to evaluate the dosimetric impact of rotational setup error in stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) for peripherally-located lung lesions.

Methods: Six patients who had been treated for peripheral lung lesions using varying SBRT techniques were analyzed. Each patient's planning CT was processed using custom in-house software to simulate 1, 3, and 5 degree roll in both directions about their longitudinal axis. The original plan was fused and re-calculated. Agreement between planned and error-simulated dose distributions was quantified using 3%, 3mm criteria for the 3-dimensional gamma metric, and changes in target coverage and adjacent normal anatomy were also quantified.

Results: Increased rotational setup error resulted in reduced target coverage, with changes in equivalent uniform dose ranging from -1.24% to -6.11% for simulated roll greater than or equal to 3 degrees, increasing with magnitude of error and skewed for roll directed toward the involved side. Changes to normal tissue metrics are linearly related to simulated roll, with rib D(1cc) changes ranging from -4.23% to 3.27% relative to the original treatment plan. Error-simulated dose distributions demonstrate agreement by the gamma metric in the planned target of 72.56%, 81.02%, and 99.52% for 5, 3, and 1 degree simulated roll scenarios, respectively. Corresponding agreement for the regional dose in excess of 50% of the maximum were 65.71%,70.77%, and 97.88%.

Conclusion: This study suggests that the ability to detect and compensate for rotational positioning variations beyond a threshold level may improve care for patients with peripherally-located lesions beyond that which may be accomplished using only translational axes. Positional error of one degree of roll had little influence, though three or more degrees of error introduced significant discrepancy.

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