scholarly journals Impact of cervicothoracic region stereotactic spine radiosurgery on adjacent organs at risk

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. E14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayur Sharma ◽  
Elizabeth E. Bennett ◽  
Gazanfar Rahmathulla ◽  
Samuel T. Chao ◽  
Hilary K. Koech ◽  
...  

OBJECTIVE Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) of the spine is a conformal method of delivering a high radiation dose to a target in a single or few (usually ≤ 5) fractions with a sharp fall-off outside the target volume. Although efforts have been focused on evaluating spinal cord tolerance when treating spinal column metastases, no study has formally evaluated toxicity to the surrounding organs at risk (OAR), such as the brachial plexus or the oropharynx, when performing SRS in the cervicothoracic region. The aim of this study was to evaluate the radiation dosimetry and the acute and delayed toxicities of SRS on OAR in such patients. METHODS Fifty-six consecutive patients (60 procedures) with a cervicothoracic spine tumor involving segments within C5–T1 who were treated using single-fraction SRS between February 2006 and July 2014 were included in the study. Each patient underwent CT simulation and high-definition MRI before treatment. The clinical target volume and OAR were contoured on BrainScan and iPlan software after image fusion. Radiation toxicity was evaluated using the common toxicity criteria for adverse events and correlated to the radiation doses delivered to these regions. The incidence of vertebral body compression fracture (VCF) before and after SRS was evaluated also. RESULTS Metastatic lesions constituted the majority (n = 52 [93%]) of tumors treated with SRS. Each patient was treated with a median single prescription dose of 16 Gy to the target. The median percentage of tumor covered by SRS was 93% (maximum target dose 18.21 Gy). The brachial plexus received the highest mean maximum dose of 17 Gy, followed by the esophagus (13.8 Gy) and spinal cord (13 Gy). A total of 14 toxicities were encountered in 56 patients (25%) during the study period. Overall, 14% (n = 8) of the patients had Grade 1 toxicity, 9% (n = 5) had Grade 2 toxicity, 2% (n = 1) had Grade 3 toxicity, and none of the patients had Grade 4 or 5 toxicity. The most common (12%) toxicity was dysphagia/odynophagia, followed by axial spine pain flare or painful radiculopathy (9%). The maximum radiation dose to the brachial plexus showed a trend toward significance (p = 0.066) in patients with worsening post-SRS pain. De novo and progressive VCFs after SRS were noted in 3% (3 of 98) and 4% (4 of 98) of vertebral segments, respectively. CONCLUSIONS From the analysis, the current SRS doses used at the Cleveland Clinic seem safe and well tolerated at the cervicothoracic junction. These preliminary data provide tolerance benchmarks for OAR in this region. Because the effect of dose-escalation SRS strategies aimed at improving local tumor control needs to be balanced carefully with associated treatment-related toxicity on adjacent OAR, larger prospective studies using such approaches are needed.

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 272-279
Author(s):  
Ehab A Hegazy

Radiotherapy of Spinal cord and brain tumor requires High care due to considerable changes in the white matter of the brain, which consequently lead to a reduction of patient learning and mental skills. It is considered a very critical tumor due to high sensitivity of gross volume location and normal tissues surrounding it, including eye, heart, plate thyroid, and testis. XiO planning systems, TLD dosimeter found in Mansoura university oncology department, CMS XIO USA TPS were compared using electron and photon beams with different energies at a different site in target volume and organs at risk. We conclude that regular calibration of planning systems and direct measurement of the dose delivered to main target and organs at risk should be done to avoid the difference between XiO planning systems and direct measurement by TLd.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhikai Liu ◽  
Fangjie Liu ◽  
Wanqi Chen ◽  
Yinjie Tao ◽  
Xia Liu ◽  
...  

Abstract Background and Objective: Delineation of the clinical target volume (CTV) and organs at risk (OARs) is very important for radiotherapy but is time-consuming and prone to inter- and intra-observer variation. We trained and evaluated a U-Net-based model to provide fast and consistent auto-segmentation for breast cancer radiotherapy. Methods: We collected 160 patients’ computed tomography (CT) scans with early-stage breast cancer who underwent breast-conserving surgery (BCS) and were treated with radiotherapy in our center. CTV and OARs (contralateral breast, heart, lungs and spinal cord) were delineated manually by two experienced radiation oncologists. The data were used for model training and testing. The dice similarity coefficient (DSC) and 95th Hausdorff distance (95HD) were used to assess the performance of our model. CTV and OARs were randomly selected as ground truth (GT) masks, and artificial intelligence (AI) masks were generated by the proposed model. The contours were randomly distributed to two clinicians to compare CTV score differences. The consistency between two clinicians was tested. We also evaluated time cost for auto-delineation. Results: The mean DSC values of the proposed method were 0.94, 0.95, 0.94, 0.96, 0.96 and 0.93 for breast CTV, contralateral breast, heart, right lung, left lung and spinal cord, respectively. The mean 95HD values were 4.31 mm, 3.59 mm, 4.86 mm, 3.18 mm, 2.79 mm and 4.37 mm for the above structures respectively. The average CTV scores for AI and GT were 2.92 versus 2.89 when evaluated by oncologist A (P=.612), and 2.75 versus 2.83 by oncologist B (P=.213), with no statistically significant differences. The consistency between two clinicians was poor (Kappa=0.282). The times for auto-segmentation of CTV and OARs were 3.88 s and 6.15 s. Conclusions: Our proposed model can improve the speed and accuracy of delineation compared with U-Net, while it performed equally well with the segmentation generated by oncologists.


2006 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 108-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Ballivy ◽  
W. Parker ◽  
T. Vuong ◽  
G. Shenouda ◽  
H. Patrocinio

We assessed the effect of geometric uncertainties on target coverage and on dose to the organs at risk (OARS) during intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) for head-and-neck cancer, and we estimated the required margins for the planning target volume (PTV) and the planning organ-at-risk volume (PRV). For eight headand- neck cancer patients, we generated IMRT plans with localization uncertainty margins of 0 mm, 2.5 mm, and 5.0 mm. The beam intensities were then applied on repeat computed tomography (CT) scans obtained weekly during treatment, and dose distributions were recalculated. The dose–volume histogram analysis for the repeat CT scans showed that target coverage was adequate (V100 ≥ 95%) for only 12.5% of the gross tumour volumes, 54.3% of the upper-neck clinical target volumes (CTVS), and 27.4% of the lower-neck CTVS when no margins were added for PTV. The use of 2.5-mm and 5.0-mm margins significantly improved target coverage, but the mean dose to the contralateral parotid increased from 25.9 Gy to 29.2 Gy. Maximum dose to the spinal cord was above limit in 57.7%, 34.6%, and 15.4% of cases when 0-mm, 2.5-mm, and 5.0-mm margins (respectively) were used for PRV. Significant deviations from the prescribed dose can occur during IMRT treatment delivery for headand- neck cancer. The use of 2.5-mm to 5.0-mm margins for PTV and PRV greatly reduces the risk of underdosing targets and of overdosing the spinal cord.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 153303382098682
Author(s):  
Kosei Miura ◽  
Hiromasa Kurosaki ◽  
Nobuko Utsumi ◽  
Hideyuki Sakurai

Purpose: The aim of this study is to comparatively examine the possibility of reducing the exposure dose to organs at risk, such as the hippocampus and lens, and improving the dose distribution of the planned target volume with and without the use of a head-tilting base plate in hippocampal-sparing whole-brain radiotherapy using tomotherapy. Methods: Five paired images of planned head computed tomography without and with tilt were analyzed. The hippocampus and planning target volume were contoured according to the RTOG 0933 contouring atlas protocol. The hippocampal zone to be avoided was delineated using a 5-mm margin. The prescribed radiation dose was 30 Gy in 10 fractions. The absorbed dose to planning target volume dose, absorbed dose to the organ at risk, and irradiation time were evaluated. The paired t-test was used to analyze the differences between hippocampal-sparing whole-brain radiotherapy with head tilts and without head tilts. Results: Hippocampal-sparing whole-brain radiotherapy with tilt was not superior in planning target volume doses using the homogeneity index than that without tilt; however, it showed better values, and for Dmean and D2%, the values were closer to 30 Gy. Regarding the hippocampus, dose reduction with tilt was significantly greater at Dmax, Dmean, and Dmin, whereas regarding the lens, it was significantly greater at Dmax and Dmin. The irradiation time was also predominantly shorter. Conclusion: In our study, a tilted hippocampal-sparing whole-brain radiotherapy reduced the irradiation time by >10%. Therefore, our study indicated that hippocampal-sparing whole-brain radiotherapy with tomotherapy should be performed with a tilt. The head-tilting technique might be useful during hippocampal-sparing whole-brain radiotherapy. This method could decrease the radiation exposure time, while sparing healthy organs, including the hippocampus and lens.


2004 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Werner-Wasik ◽  
Xiaoli Yu ◽  
Lawrence B Marks ◽  
Timothy E Schultheiss

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