Fast verification of Gamma Knife™ treatment plans

Abstract

The Leksell stereotactic Gamma Knife™ uses radiation from 201 sources that are focused to the center of a collimator helmet to deliver a high dose of radiation with minimal irradiation of proximal structures. This paper presents a method for fast verification of the irradiation time as calculated by the Leksell Gamma Knife™ treatment planning software GammaPlan®. To obtain the irradiation time for each shot in the treatment plan, one must first accurately calculate the tissue maximum ratio (TMR) for each of the individual 201 beams. The algorithm presented in this paper begins with the determination of the geometrical relationship between the Gamma Knife™ collimator helmet and the stereotactic frame. A group of reference points is measured to build a head model simulating the patient skull geometry. During radiosurgery, the isocenter of the collimator helmet is moved to the shot center. A group of spatial vectors describing the reference points at the skull surface is obtained by converting the Cartesian coordinates to Polar coordinates. For each individual beam, the three nearest reference vectors are found by ranking the relative angles. The depth that each beam penetrates the patient's skull to the isocenter is obtained via linear interpolation. The TMR for each beam then is compared with the TMR for the calibration setup, which is done using a spherical 8 cm radius phantom. This algorithm is applied to verify the treatment time calculated in GammaPlan® Version 5.2. The results are shown to agree with GammaPlan® within 3%. PACS number(s): 87.52.–g, 87.66.–a