2067 Novel brachytherapy treatment planning system utilizing dose rate dependent average cell survival, CT-simulator, and dose-volume histogram

Abstract

This report describes a new brachytherapy planning program that provides an evaluation of a given low or high dose rate treatment taking into account spatial dose heterogeneity and cell response to radiation. This brachytherapy scheme uses the images from a CT-Simulator (AcQSim, Picker International, Cleveland, Ohio) to simultaneously localize the seed positions and to axially scan the patient. This procedure helps to ensure accurate registration of the putative seed positions with the patient tissues and organs. The seed positions are determined by back-projecting positions of seeds or dummy seeds from the CT-Simulator setup scout images. Physicians delineate the tissues of interest on the axial slices. Dose is computed after assigning activity (low dose rate) of dwell times (high dose rate) to the Ir{sup 192} or I{sup 125} seed. The planar isodose distribution is superimposed onto axial cuts of the tissues and onto coronal or sagital views of the tissues following image reconstruction. Areal or volumetric calculations of the dose distribution within a given tissue are computed from the tissue outlines. The treatment plan computes (1) volume differential and cummulative dose histograms of the dose delivered to individual tissues, (2) the average, standard deviation, and coefficient of skewness of the dosemore » distribution delivered to the individual tissues, (3) the average survival probability for a given radiation treatment.« less