Feasibility study of an electronic portal imaging based in vivo dose verification system for prostate stereotactic body radiotherapy

Abstract

Purpose: We evaluated the feasibility of electronic portal imaging based 3D in-vivo dosimetry for stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) technique in prostate cancer.

Methods and materials: To investigate error detectability limitations of iViewDose™ v.1.0.1 (Elekta, Stockholm, Sweden) for prostate SBRT cases, ten prostate cancer patients were selected and in-vivo electronic portal imaging devices dosimetry was performed. Also possible error scenarios including dose calibration, setup, collimator, multi leaf collimator and patient anatomy related inaccuracies were created to investigate detectability of EPID. For this purpose, a SBRT treatment was planned on BrainLab pelvis phantom (BrainLab Medical Systems, Westchester, IL) and irradiated after proving setup with cone beam computer tomography. After that incorrect plans were irradiated and obtained results were compared with original in vivo measurements.

Results: Mean gamma analysis (γ% ≤ 1) passing rate of ten patients was found as 96.2%. Additionally, mean dose reference point difference between measurement and calculated in treatment planning system for clinical target volume, rectum, bladder, left and right femur heads were found as 1.4%, 8%, 20.8%, 2.3% and 4.5%, respectively. Phantom measurements showed that positional errors can be escape from detection. However, the incorrect treated plans including linac calibration, MLC positions and patient anatomy based errors could not have passed the in vivo dosimetry analysis.

Conclusions: EPID-based 3D in vivo dosimetry software (iViewDose) provides an efficient safety check on the accuracy of dose delivery during prostate SBRT treatments. However, phantom results showed some limitation of the system.

Keywords: EPID dosimetry; Error detection; Prostate SBRT; Quality assurance; VMAT.