Browsing by Author "Akino, Yuichi"

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    Correlation between target volume and electron transport effects affecting heterogeneity corrections in stereotactic body radiotherapy for lung cancer
    (Oxford University Press, 2014) Akino, Yuichi; Das, Indra J.; Cardenes, Higinia R.; Desrosiers, Colleen M.; Radiation Oncology, School of Medicine
    Recently, stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) for lung cancer is conducted with heterogeneity-corrected treatment plans, as the correction greatly affects the dose delivery to the lung tumor. In this study, the correlation between the planning target volume (PTV) and the dose delivery is investigated by separation of the heterogeneity correction effects into photon attenuation and electron transport. Under Institutional Review Board exemption status, 74 patients with lung cancer who were treated with SBRT were retrospectively evaluated. All treatment plans were generated using an anisotropic analytical algorithm (AAA) of an Eclipse (Varian Medical Systems, Palo Alto, CA) treatment planning system. Two additional plans were created using the same treatment parameters (monitor units, beam angles and energy): a plan with no heterogeneity correction (NC), and a plan calculated with a pencil beam convolution algorithm (PBC). Compared with NC, AAA and PBC isocenter doses were on average 13.4% and 21.8% higher, respectively. The differences in the isocenter dose and the dose coverage for 95% of the PTV (D95%) between PBC and AAA were correlated logarithmically (ρ = 0.78 and ρ = 0.46, respectively) with PTV. Although D95% calculated with AAA was in general 2.9% larger than that for NC, patients with a small PTV showed a negative ΔD95% for AAA due to the significant effect of electron transport. The PTV volume shows logarithmic correlation with the effects of the lateral electron transport. These findings indicate that the dosimetric metrics and prescription, especially in clinical trials, should be clearly evaluated in the context of target volume characteristics and with proper heterogeneity correction.
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    An effective method to reduce the interplay effects between respiratory motion and a uniform scanning proton beam irradiation for liver tumors: A case study
    (Wiley, 2019-01) Akino, Yuichi; Wu, Huanmei; Oh, Ryoong-Jin; Das, Indra J.; BioHealth Informatics, School of Informatics and Computing
    PURPOSE: For scanning particle beam therapy, interference between scanning patterns and interfield organ motion may result in suboptimal dose within target volume. In this study, we developed a simple offline correction technique for uniform scanning proton beam (USPB) delivery to compensate for the interplay between scanning patterns and respiratory motion and demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique in treating liver cancer. METHODS: The computed tomography (CT) and respiration data of two patients who had received stereotactic body radiotherapy for hepatocellular carcinoma were used. In the simulation, the relative beam weight delivered to each respiratory phase is calculated for each beam layer after treatment of each fraction. Respiratory phases with beam weights higher than 50% of the largest weight are considered "skipped phases" for the next fraction. For the following fraction, the beam trigger is regulated to prevent beam layers from starting irradiation in skipped phases by extending the interval between each layer. To calculate dose-volume histogram (DVH), the dose of the target volume at end-exhale (50% phase) was calculated as the sum of each energy layer, with consideration of displacement due to respiratory motion and relative beam weight delivered per respiratory phase. RESULTS: For a single fraction, D1% , D99% , and V100% were 114%, 88%, and 32%, respectively, when 8 Gy/min of dose rate was simulated. Although these parameters were improved with multiple fractions, dosimetric inhomogeneity without motion management remained even at 30 fractions, with V100% 86.9% at 30 fractions. In contrast, the V100% values with adaptation were 96% and 98% at 20 and 30 fractions, respectively. We developed an offline correction technique for USPB therapy to compensate for the interplay effects between respiratory organ motion and USPB beam delivery. CONCLUSIONS: For liver tumor, this adaptive therapy technique showed significant improvement in dose uniformity even with fewer treatment fractions than normal USPB therapy.
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    Intra- and intervariability in beam data commissioning among water phantom scanning systems
    (American Association of Physicists in Medicine, 2014-07-08) Akino, Yuichi; Gibbons, John P.; Neck, Daniel W.; Chu, Connel; Das, Indra J.; Radiation Oncology, School of Medicine
    Accurate beam data acquisition during commissioning is essential for modeling the treatment planning system and dose calculation in radiotherapy. Although currently several commercial scanning systems are available, there is no report that compared the differences among the systems because most institutions do not acquire several scanning systems due to the high cost, storage space, and infrequent usage. In this report, we demonstrate the intra- and intervariability of beam profiles measured with four commercial scanning systems. During a recent educational and training workshop, four different vendors of beam scanning water phantoms were invited to demonstrate the operation and data collection of their systems. Systems were set up utilizing vendor-recommended protocols and were operated with a senior physicist, who was assigned as an instructor along with vendor. During the training sessions, each group was asked to measure beam parameters, and the intravariability in percent depth dose (PDD). At the end of the day, the profile of one linear accelerator was measured with each system to evaluate intervariability. Relatively very small (SD < 0.12%) intervariability in PDD was observed among four systems at a region deeper than peak (1.5 cm). All systems showed almost identical profiles. At the area within 80% of radiation field, the average, and maximum differences were within ± 0.35% and 0.80%, respectively, compared to arbitrarily chosen IBA system as reference. In the penumbrae region, the distance to agreement (DTA) of the region where dose difference exceed ± 1% was less than 1 mm. Repeated PDD measurement showed small intravariability with SD < 0.5%, although large SD was observed in the buildup region. All four water phantom scanning systems demonstrated adequate accuracy for beam data collection (i.e., within 1% of dose difference or 1 mm of DTA among each other). It is concluded that every system is capable of acquiring accurate beam. Thus the selection of a water scanning system should be based on institutional comfort, personal preference of software and hardware, and financial consideration.