Split-VMAT technique to control the deep inspiration breath hold time for breast cancer radiotherapy

Abstract

Background: To improve split-VMAT technique by optimizing treatment delivery time for deep-inspiration breath hold (DIBH) radiotherapy in left-sided breast cancer patients, when automatic beam-interruption devices are not available. Methods: Ten consecutive patients were treated with an eight partial arcs (8paVMAT) plan, standard of care in our center. A four partial arcs (4paVMAT) plan was also created and actual LINAC outputs were measured, to evaluate whether there was a dosimetric difference between both techniques and potential impact on the delivered dose. Subsequently, ten other patients were consecutively treated with a 4paVMAT plan to compare the actual treatment delivery time between both techniques. The prescribed dose was 40.05 Gy/15 fractions on the PTV breast (breast or thoracic wall), lymph nodes (LN) and intramammary lymph node chain (IMN). Treatment delivery time, PTVs coverage, conformity index (CI), organs at risk (OAR) dose, monitor units (MU), and gamma index were compared. Results: Both split-VMAT techniques resulted in similar dose coverage for the PTV Breast and LN, and similar CI. For PTV IMN we observed a 5% increased coverage for the volume receiving ≥ 36 Gy with 4paVMAT, with an identical volume receiving ≥ 32 Gy. There was no difference for the OAR sparing, with the exception of the contralateral organs: there was a 0.6 Gy decrease for contralateral breast mean (p ≤ 0.01) and 1% decrease for the volume of right lung receiving ≥ 5 Gy (p = 0.024). Overall, these results indicate a modest clinical benefit of using 4paVMAT in comparison to 8paVMAT. An increase in the number of MU per arc was observed for the 4paVMAT technique, as expected, while the total number of MU remained comparable for both techniques. All the plans were measured with the Delta4 phantom and passed the gamma index criteria with no significant differences. Finally, the main difference was seen for the treatment delivery time: there was a significant decrease from 8.9 to 5.4 min for the 4paVMAT plans (p