WE-AB-202-04: Statistical Evaluation of Lung Function Using 4DCT Ventilation Imaging: Proton Therapy VS IMRT

• Published in: Medical physics (Lancaster) Vol. 43; no. 6; p. 3795
• Main Authors: Huang, Q, Zhang, M, Chen, T, Yue, N, Zou, J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Association of Physicists in Medicine 01.06.2016
• Subjects: 60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES; BIOMEDICAL RADIOGRAPHY; Cancer; COMPUTER CODES; Dosimetry; Image registration; Intensity modulated radiation therapy; LUNGS; Medical imaging; Medical treatment planning; NEOPLASMS; PATIENTS; PLANNING; PROTON BEAMS; Proton therapy; Protons; RADIATION DOSE DISTRIBUTIONS; RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY; Radiation treatment; RADIOTHERAPY; STATISTICS
• DOI: 10.1118/1.4957745
• ISSN: 0094-2405

Purpose: Variation in function of different lung regions has been ignored so far for conventional lung cancer treatment planning, which may lead to higher risk of radiation induced lung disease. 4DCT based lung ventilation imaging provides a novel yet convenient approach for lung functional imaging as 4DCT is taken as routine for lung cancer treatment. Our work aims to evaluate the impact of accounting for spatial heterogeneity in lung function using 4DCT based lung ventilation imaging for proton and IMRT plans. Methods: Six patients with advanced stage lung cancer of various tumor locations were retrospectively evaluated for the study. Proton and IMRT plans were designed following identical planning objective and constrains for each patient. Ventilation images were calculated from patients’ 4DCT using deformable image registration implemented by Velocity AI software based on Jacobian-metrics. Lung was delineated into two function level regions based on ventilation (low and high functional area). High functional region was defined as lung ventilation greater than 30%. Dose distribution and statistics in different lung function area was calculated for patients. Results: Variation in dosimetric statistics of different function lung region was observed between proton and IMRT plans. In all proton plans, high function lung regions receive lower maximum dose (100.2%–108.9%), compared with IMRT plans (106.4%–119.7%). Interestingly, three out of six proton plans gave higher mean dose by up to 2.2% than IMRT to high function lung region. Lower mean dose (lower by up to 14.1%) and maximum dose (lower by up to 9%) were observed in low function lung for proton plans. Conclusion: A systematic approach was developed to generate function lung ventilation imaging and use it to evaluate plans. This method hold great promise in function analysis of lung during planning. We are currently studying more subjects to evaluate this tool.