Plan robustness for stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT): Standardized reporting through grid based assessment

  • Category: BORDET
  • Swimlane: 2022-2023
  • Column: Draft
  • Position: 45
  • Assignee: Olivier Debeir
  • Creator: Olivier Debeir
  • Started:
  • Created: 18/05/2020 10:32
  • Modified: 23/04/2021 12:08
  • Moved: 23/04/2021 12:08
  • Bordet
Description

Background:

The primary objective of radiotherapy always remains to deliver adequate dose to the target volume, while trying to avoid dose burden to organs at risk (OAR). To maintain this goal in the presence of uncertainties a uniform safety margin around the clinical target volume (CTV) is added for the planning purposes (planning target volume [PTV]). During Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT) close proximity of OARs are frequently limiting the adequate dose coverage of the PTV.

Goal:

In these scenarios, the dose gradient around the target is inhomogeneous leading to differences in safety against setup errors. In this master thesis, the candidate should evaluate the directional setup error intolerance of these plans (robustness) by displacement of the isocenter and recalculate the entire dose matrix. He/she should obtain clinically relevant thresholds (for example, 95% of the CTV should receive 95% dose, while OAR dose maximum is still respected) for the robustness classification (pass/fail) and develop a standardized reporting, which could be communicated to the radiation oncologist and radiotherapy technologist on a patient specific level. This could result in an extra safety measure for SBRT by determining the anatomical direction where the setup should be most precise. For this work, an intermediate level of scripting (e.g. Python) is recommended. Depending on the orientation of the candidate, this work can be extended to evaluate in which clinical scenarios is sufficient to perform dose matrix displacement only.

Promoters:

Akos Gulyban akos.gulyban@bordet.be

Nick Reynaert nick.reynaert@bordet.be

Olivier Debeir odebeir@ulb.ac.be

Nicolas Pauly Nicolas.Pauly@ulb.be

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