Comparative analyses of linac and Gamma Knife radiosurgery for trigeminal neuralgia treatments

Abstract

Dedicated linac-based radiosurgery has been reported for trigeminal neuralgia treatments. In this study, we investigated the dose fall-off characteristics and setup error tolerance of linac-based radiosurgery as compared with standard Gamma Knife radiosurgery. In order to minimize the errors from different treatment planning calculations, consistent imaging registration, dose calculation and dose volume analysis methods were developed and implemented for both Gamma Knife and linac-based treatments. Intra-arc setup errors were incorporated into the treatment planning process of linac-based deliveries. The effects of intra-arc setup errors with increasing number of arcs were studied and benchmarked against Gamma Knife deliveries with and without plugging patterns. Our studies found equivalent dose fall-off properties between Gamma Knife and linac-based radiosurgery given a sufficient number of arcs (>7) and small intra-arc errors (<0.5 mm) were satisfied for linac-based deliveries. Increasing the number of arcs significantly decreased the variations in the dose fall-off curve at the low isodose region (e.g. from 40% to 10%) and also improved dose uniformity at the high isodose region (e.g. from 70% to 90%). As the number of arcs increased, the effects of intra-arc setup errors on the dose fall-off curves decreased. Increasing the number of arcs also reduced the integral dose to the distal normal brain tissues. In conclusion, linac-based radiosurgery produces equivalent dose fall-off characteristics to Gamma Knife radiosurgery with a high number of arcs. However, one must note the increased treatment time for a large number of arcs and isocentre accuracies.