Inter- and intrafractional 4D dose accumulation for evaluating ΔNTCP robustness in lung cancer

• Published in: Radiotherapy and oncology 2023-05, Vol.182, p.109488, Article 109488
• Main Authors: Smolders, Andreas, Hengeveld, Adriaan C., Both, Stefan, Wijsman, Robin, Langendijk, Johannes A., Weber, Damien C., Lomax, Anthony J., Albertini, Francesca, Guterres Marmitt, Gabriel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: DIR; Humans; Lung cancer; Lung Neoplasms - diagnostic imaging; Lung Neoplasms - etiology; Lung Neoplasms - radiotherapy; Motion; NTCP; Proton therapy; Proton Therapy - methods; Protons; Radiotherapy Dosage; Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted - methods; Robustness; Uncertainty
• ISSN: 0167-8140; 1879-0887
• DOI: 10.1016/j.radonc.2023.109488

•ΔNTCP based on (reconstructed) delivered dose is compared to ΔNTCP based on planned dose.•ΔNTCP based on the planned dose is an unbiased predictor of ΔNTCP based on the delivered dose.•For a single patient, variations of ±2% compared to planned ΔNTCP can be expected.•The deformable image registration algorithm affects ΔNTCP up to 1.6%.•The choice of α/β ratio has only a minor effect on the ΔNTCP. Model-based selection of proton therapy patients relies on a predefined reduction in normal tissue complication probability (NTCP) with respect to photon therapy. The decision is necessarily made based on the treatment plan, but NTCP can be affected when the delivered treatment deviates from the plan due to delivery inaccuracies. Especially for proton therapy of lung cancer, this can be important because of tissue density changes and, with pencil beam scanning, the interplay effect between the proton beam and breathing motion. In this work, we verified whether the expected benefit of proton therapy is retained despite delivery inaccuracies by reconstructing the delivered treatment using log-file based dose reconstruction and inter- and intrafractional accumulation. Additionally, the importance of two uncertain parameters for treatment reconstruction, namely deformable image registration (DIR) algorithm and α/β ratio, was assessed. The expected benefit or proton therapy was confirmed in 97% of all studied cases, despite regular differences up to 2 percent point (p.p.) NTCP between the delivered and planned treatments. The choice of DIR algorithm affected NTCP up to 1.6 p.p., an order of magnitude higher than the effect of α/β ratio. For the patient population and treatment technique employed, the predicted clinical benefit for patients selected for proton therapy was confirmed for 97.0% percent of all cases, although the NTCP based proton selection was subject to 2 p.p. variations due to delivery inaccuracies.