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Dosimetric accuracy of proton therapy for chordoma patients with titanium implants.

ABSTRACT: To investigate dosimetric errors in proton therapy treatment planning due to titanium implants, and to determine how these affect postoperative passively scattered proton therapy for chordoma patients with orthopedic hardware.The presence of titanium hardware near the tumor may affect the dosimetric accuracy of proton therapy. Artifacts in the computed tomography (CT) scan can cause errors in the proton stopping powers used for dose calculation, which are derived from CT numbers. Also, clinical dose calculation algorithms may not accurately simulate proton beam transport through the implants, which have very different properties as compared to human tissue. The authors first evaluated the impact of these two main issues. Dose errors introduced by metal artifacts were studied using phantoms with and without titanium inserts, and patient scans on which a metal artifact reduction method was applied. Pencil-beam dose calculations were compared to models of nuclear interactions in titanium and Monte Carlo simulations. Then, to assess the overall impact on treatment plans for chordoma, the authors compared the original clinical treatment plans to recalculated dose distributions employing both metal artifact reduction and Monte Carlo methods.Dose recalculations of clinical proton fields showed that metal artifacts cause range errors up to 6 mm distal to regions affected by CT artifacts. Monte Carlo simulations revealed dose differences >10% in the high-dose area, and range differences up to 10 mm. Since these errors are mostly local in nature, the large number of fields limits the impact on target coverage in the chordoma treatment plans to a small decrease of dose homogeneity.In the presence of titanium implants, CT metal artifacts and the approximations of pencil-beam dose calculations cause considerable errors in proton dose calculation. The spatial distribution of the errors however limits the overall impact on passively scattered proton therapy for chordoma.

SUBMITTER: Verburg JM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3710252 | biostudies-other | 2013 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Project description:Chordomas are relatively rare lesions of the bones. About 30% occur in the sacrococcygeal region. Surgical resection is still the standard treatment. Due to the size, proximity to neurovascular structures and the complex anatomy of the pelvis, a complete resection with adequate safety margin is difficult to perform. A radical resection with safety margins often leads to the loss of bladder and rectal function as well as motoric/sensoric dysfunction. The recurrence rate after surgery alone is comparatively high, such that adjuvant radiation therapy is very important for improving local control rates. Proton therapy is still the international standard in the treatment of chordomas. High-LET beams such as carbon ions theoretically offer biologic advantages in slow-growing tumors. Data of a Japanese study of patients with unresectable sacral chordoma showed comparable high control rates after hypofractionated carbon ion therapy only.This clinical study is a prospective randomized, monocentric phase II trial. Patients with histologically confirmed sacrococcygeal chordoma will be randomized to either proton or carbon ion radiation therapy stratified regarding the clinical target volume. Target volume delineation will be carried out based on CT and MRI data. In each arm the PTV will receive 64 GyE in 16 fractions. The primary objective of this trial is safety and feasibility of hypofractionated irradiation in patients with sacrococygeal chordoma using protons or carbon ions in raster scan technique for primary or additive treatment after R2 resection. The evaluation is therefore based on the proportion of treatments without Grade 3-5 toxicity (CTCAE, version 4.0) up to 12 months after treatment and/or discontinuation of the treatment for any reason as primary endpoint. Local-progression free survival, overall survival and quality of life will be analyzed as secondary end points.The aim of this study is to confirm the toxicity results of the Japanese data in raster scan technique and to compare it with the toxicity analysis of proton therapy given in the same fractionation. Using this data, a further randomized phase III trial is planned, comparing hypofractionated proton and carbon ion irradiation.ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01811394.

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Dosimetric accuracy of proton therapy for chordoma patients with titanium implants.

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