Validation of dose painting of lung tumours using alanine/EPR dosimetry

Biologic image guided radiotherapy (RT) with escalated doses to tumour sub volumes challenges today's RT dose planning and delivery systems. In this phantom study, we verify the capability of a clinical dose planning and delivery system to deliver an F-18-FDG-PET based dose painted treatment plan to a lung tumour. Furthermore, we estimate the uncertainties of the dose painted treatment compared to conventional RT plans. An anthropomorphic thorax phantom of polystyrene and polyurethane was constructed based on CT images of a lung cancer patient. 101 EPR/alanine dosimeters were placed in separate cavities within the phantom. IMRT and VMAT plans were generated in Eclipse (version 10.0, Analytical Anisotropic Algorithm version 10.2.28, Varian Medical Systems, Inc.) for 6 and 15 MV photons, based on F-18-FDG-PET/CT images of the patient. A boost dose of 3.8 Gy/fraction was given to the F-18-FDG-avid region (biological planning volume; BTV), whereas 3.1 Gy/fraction was planned to the planning target volume (PTV, excluding the BTV). For the homogenous plans, 3.2 Gy/fraction was given to the PTV. Irradiation of the phantom was carried out at a Varian Trilogy linear accelerator (Varian Medical Systems, Inc.). Uncertainties involved in treatment planning and delivery were estimated from portal dosimetry gamma evalutation. Measured and calculated doses were compared by Bland-Altmann analysis. For all treatment plans, all dose-volume objectives could be achieved in the treatment planning system. The mean absolute differences between calculated and measured doses were small (<0.1 Gy) for BTV, PTV-BTV, lung and soft tissue. The estimated uncertainty of the planned doses was less than 3% for all plans, whereas the estimated uncertainty in the measured doses was less 2.3%. Our results show that planning and delivery of dose escalated lung cancer treatment on a clinical dose planning and delivery system has high dosimetric accuracy. The uncertainties associated with the dose escalated treatment plans are comparable to the conventional plans.