A model for dose estimation in therapy of liver with intraarterial microspheres

Abstract

Therapy with intraarterial microspheres is a technique which involves incorporation of radioisotope-labelled microspheres into a capillary bed of tumour and normal tissue. Beta-emitters such as and are used for this purpose. This technique provides tumour to normal tissue (TNT) dose ratios in the range of 2 - 10 and demonstrates significant clinical benefit, which could potentially be increased with more accurate dose predictions and delivery. However, dose calculations in this modality face the difficulties associated with nonuniform and inhomogeneous activity distribution. Most of the dose calculations used clinically do not account for the nonuniformity and assume uniform activity distribution. This paper is devoted to the development of a model which would allow more accurate prediction of dose distributions from microspheres. The model calculates dose assuming that microspheres are aggregated into randomly distributed clusters, and using precomputed dose kernels for the clusters. The dose kernel due to a microsphere cluster was found by numerical integration of a point source dose kernel over the volume of the cluster. It is shown that a random distribution of clusters produces an intercluster distance distribution which agrees well with the one measured by Pillai et al in liver. Dose volume histograms (DVHs) predicted by the model agree closely with the results of Roberson et al for normal tissue and tumour. Dose distributions for different concentrations and types of radioisotope, as well as for tumours of different radii, have been calculated to demonstrate the model's possible applications.