Patient specific quality control for Stereotactic Ablative Body Radiotherapy (SABR): It takes more than one phantom

Abstract

Stereotactic Ablative Body Radiotherapy (SABR) is an extension of the concepts of Stereotactic Radiosurgery from intracranial procedures to extracranial targets. This brings with it new technological challenges for set-up of a SABR program and continuing quality assurance. Compared with intracranial procedures SABR requires consideration of motion and inhomogeneities and has to deal with a much larger variety of targets ranging from lung to liver, kidney and bone. To meet many of the challenges virtually all advances in modern radiotherapy, such as Intensity Modulated and Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IMRT and IGRT) are used. Considering the few fractions and high doses per fraction delivered to complex targets it is not surprising that patient specific quality control is considered essential for safe delivery. Given the variety of targets and clinical scenarios we employ different strategies for different patients to ensure that the most important aspects of the treatment are appropriately tested, be it steep dose gradients, inhomogeneities or the delivery of dose in the presence of motion. The current paper reviews the different approaches and phantoms utilised at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre for SABR QA.