Browsing by Author "Langer, Mark"

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    The Dosimetric Outcome of a Rotational Planning Target Volume in Patients With Oropharyngeal Cancers
    (Springer, 2022-08) Arbab, Mona; Bartlett, Gregory; Dawson, Benjamin; Ge, Jeffrey; Langer, Mark; Radiation Oncology, School of Medicine
    An isotropic expanded Planning Target Volume (PTV) neglects patient's off-axis rotation. This study designs a rotational PTV that is used instead of the standard 3-mm Clinical Target Volume (CTV) expanded PTV in oropharyngeal cancers with the goal to reduce pharyngeal constrictor muscle (PCM) mean dose. 10 patients were retrospectively evaluated. For off-axis rotation, the image was rotated around the longitudinal axis (cervical spinal canal) ± 5 degrees. These new CTVs were combined to form the rotational PTV. The standard and rotational treatment plans were designed with the goal to keep the superior and middle PCM-CTV70 mean dose to less than 50 Gy. There were a 355 cGy reduction in the superior PCM mean dose (form 5332 to 4977 cGy) and a 506 cGy reduction in middle PCM mean dose (from 4185 to 3679 cGy). 60% of patients may have at least a 20% reduction in dysphagia probability based on a Normal Tissue Complication Probability (NTCP) formula. The superior and middle PCM mean dose were reduced to less than 50 Gy in 40 and 20% of cases. There was an association between superior PCM mean dose and overlap volume of PTV70 and superior PCM in both standard (r = 0.92, p = 0.001) and rotational (r = 0.84, p = 0.002) plans. This association was present for middle PCM and PTV70 (r = 0.52, p = 0.02 and r = 0.62, p = 0.006). Rotational PTV can lower the mean dose to superior and middle PCMs, ultimately leading to lower dysphagia rates.
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    Impact of Lung Parenchymal-Only Failure on Overall Survival in Early-Stage Lung Cancer Patients Treated With Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy
    (Elsevier, 2021) Elbanna, May; Shiue, Kevin; Edwards, Donna; Cerra-Franco, Alberto; Agrawal, Namita; Hinton, Jason; Mereniuk, Todd; Huang, Christina; Ryan, Joshua L.; Smith, Jessica; Aaron, Vasantha D.; Burney, Heather; Zang, Yong; Holmes, Jordan; Langer, Mark; Zellars, Richard; Lautenschlaeger, Tim; Radiation Oncology, School of Medicine
    Introduction: The impact of lung parenchymal-only failure on patient survival after stereotactic ablative body radiotherapy (SABR) for early-stage non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains unclear. Patients and methods: The study population included 481 patients with early-stage NSCLC who were treated with 3- to 5-fraction SABR between 2000 and 2016. The primary study objective was to assess the impact of out-of-field lung parenchymal-only failure (OLPF) on overall survival (OS). Results: At a median follow-up of 5.9 years, the median OS was 2.7 years for all patients. Patients with OLPF did not have a significantly different OS compared to patients without failure (P = .0952, median OS 4.1 years with failure vs. 2.6 years never failure). Analysis in a 1:1 propensity score-matched cohort for Karnofsky performance status, comorbidity score, and smoking status showed no differences in OS between patients without failure and those with OLPF (P = .8). In subgroup analyses exploring the impact of time of failure on OS, patients with OLPF 6 months or more after diagnosis did not have significantly different OS compared to those without failure, when accounting for immortal time bias (P = .3, median OS 4.3 years vs. 3.5 years never failure). Only 7 patients in our data set experienced failure within 6 months of treatment, of which only 4 were confirmed to be true failures; therefore, limited data are available in our cohort on the impact of OLPF for ≤ 6 months on OS. Conclusion: OLPF after SABR for early-stage NSCLC does not appear to adversely affect OS, especially if occurring at least 6 months after SABR. More studies are needed to understand if OLPF within 6 months of SABR is associated with adverse OS. These data are useful when discussing prognosis of lung parenchymal failures after initial SABR.
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    On the Computation of the Average of Spatial Displacements
    (ASME, 2022) Ge, Q. J.; Yu, Zihan; Arbab, Mona; Langer, Mark; Radiation Oncology, School of Medicine
    Many applications in biomechanics and medical imaging call for the analysis of the kinematic errors in a group of patients statistically using the average displacement and the standard deviations from the average. This paper studies the problem of computing the average displacement from a set of given spatial displacements using three types of parametric representations: Euler angles and translation vectors, unit quaternions and translation vectors, and dual quaternions. It has been shown that the use of Euclidean norm in the space of unit quaternions reduces the problem to that of computing the average for each quaternion component separately and independently. While the resulting algorithm is simple, the change of the sign of a unit quaternion could lead to an incorrect result. A novel kinematic measure based on dual quaternions is introduced to capture the separation between two spatial displacement. This kinematic measure is then used to formulate a constrained least squares minimization problem. It has been shown that the problem decomposes into that of finding the optimal translation vector and the optimal unit quaternion. The former is simply the centroid of the set of given translation vectors and the latter can be obtained as the eigenvector corresponding to the least eigenvalue of a 4 × 4 positive definite symmetric matrix. It is found that the weight factor used in combining rotations and translations in the formulation does not play a role in the final outcome. Examples are provided to show the comparisons of these methods.
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    Radt-43. Treatment of Retroperitoneal Leiomyosarcoma Brain Metastases With Stereotactic Radiosurgery
    (Oxford University Press, 2020-11) McClelland, Shearwood, III.; Gardner, Ulysses; Langer, Mark; Shiue, Kevin; Radiation Oncology, School of Medicine
    Introduction: Retroperitoneal leiomyosarcoma is a relatively rare disease, with infrequent metastatic spread to the CNS. We present the first report of radiosurgical treatment of this disease. Methods: A 49-year-old woman developed leiomyosarcoma of the inferior vena cava and retroperitoneum with lung metastases on diagnosis. Following multiple courses of systemic and operative treatment, she developed a tender ulcerating mass in the left upper maxillary incisor associated with numbness along the upper gum, lip, and premaxillary area. CT revealed a 3.0 cm left posterior alveolar ridge gum lesion with bone invasion, for which she elected to undergo palliative radiation therapy (30 Gy in 10 fractions). Due to potential maxillary nerve involvement altering the intended radiation therapy treatment fields, an orbit/face MRI was performed to better delineate the lesion. On this MRI, two frontal lobe lesions were visualized; subsequent dedicated brain MRI revealed a total of five metastases (0.9 cm right superior frontal gyrus, 0.9 cm left middle frontal gyrus, 0.9 cm right postcentral gyrus, 0.7 cm right occipital, and 1.6 cm left occipital). Consequently, the decision was made to treat the brain metastases with linear accelerator (LINAC) stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) to allow simultaneous treatment of the maxillary lesion and brain metastases. Results: A single CT simulation was performed for her intracranial and extracranial disease, using the Encompass face mask to allow for simultaneous head immobilization and optimal SRS targeting accuracy. LINAC SRS was delivered simultaneously during maxillary lesion radiation therapy to all five lesions (22 Gy to the 80% isodose line) in a single fraction with a 0.2 cm planning target volume (PTV) margin for each lesion. Conclusions: The first reported case of metastatic retroperitoneal leiomyosarcoma brain metastases treated with SRS demonstrates the flexibility of LINAC (rather than Gamma Knife) SRS in allowing for simultaneous treatment of intracranial and extracranial metastatic disease.