Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 348471, 7 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/348471
Research Article
Risk-Adaptive Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy Using Biological Objective Functions for Subvolume Boosting in Radiotherapy
1Departments of Human Oncology and Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53792, USA
2Department of Physical Sciences, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, East Melbourne, VIC 3002, Australia
3Centre for Medical Radiation Physics, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia
4Oncophysics Institute, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, Jack and Pearl Resnick Campus, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA
Received 19 March 2012; Accepted 26 April 2012
Academic Editor: Scott Penfold
Copyright © 2012 Nicholas Hardcastle and Wolfgang A. Tome. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Objectives. Simultaneous integrated boost (SIB) for prostate cancer allows increases in tumor control probability while respecting normal tissue dose constraints. Biological optimization functions that optimize based on treatment outcome can be used to create SIB prostate plans. This study investigates the feasibility of biologically optimized volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) for SIB prostate radiotherapy. Methods. Five prostate cancer patients with diffusion-weighted MR images were selected for analysis. A two-step VMAT optimization was performed, which consisted of an initial biological optimization of a static gantry angle delivery followed by conversion of the static delivery to a single arc VMAT plan. A dosimetric analysis was performed on the resulting plans. Results. The VMAT plans resulted in a ΔEUD between the prostate and the boost volume of between 15.1 Gy and 20.3 Gy. Rectal volumes receiving 75.6 Gy ranged from 4.5 to 9.9%. Expected rectal normal tissue complication probabilities were between 8.6% and 21.4%. Maximum bladder doses ranged from 73.6 Gy to 75.8 Gy. Estimated treatment time was 120 s or less. Conclusions. The presented biological optimization method resulted in deliverable VMAT plans that achieved sufficient modulation for SIB without violating rectal and bladder dose constraints. Advances in knowledge. This study presents a method for creating simultaneous integrated boost VMAT treatments using biological outcome objective functions.