Using an onboard kilovoltage imager to measure setup deviation in intensity-modulated radiation therapy for head-and-neck patients Journal Article


Authors: Mechalakos, J. G.; Hunt, M. A.; Lee, N. Y.; Hong, L. X.; Ling, C. C.; Amols, H. I.
Article Title: Using an onboard kilovoltage imager to measure setup deviation in intensity-modulated radiation therapy for head-and-neck patients
Abstract: The purpose of the present study was to use a kilovoltage imaging device to measure interfractional and intrafractional setup deviations in patients with head-and-neck or brain cancers receiving intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) treatment. Before and after IMRT treatment, approximately 3 times weekly, 7 patients were imaged using the Varian On-Board Imager (OBI: Varian Medical Systems, Palo Alto, CA), a kilovoltage imaging device permanently mounted on the gantry of a Varian 21EX LINAC (Varian Medical Systems). Because of commissioning of the remote couch correction of the OBI during the study, online setup corrections were performed on 2 patients. For the other 5 patients, weekly corrections were made based on a sliding average of the measured data. From these data, we determined the interfractional setup deviation (defined as the shift from the original setup position suggested by the daily image), the residual error associated with the weekly correction protocol, and the intrafractional setup deviation, defined as the difference between the post-treatment and pretreatment images. We also used our own image registration software to determine interfractional and intrafractional rotational deviations from the images based on the template-matching method. In addition, we evaluated the influence of inter-observer variation on our results, and whether the use of various registration techniques introduced differences. Finally, translational data were compared with rotational data to search for correlations. Translational setup errors from all data were 0.0 +/- 0.2 cm, -0.1 +/- 0.3 cm, and -0.2 +/- 0.3 cm in the right-left (RL), anterior-posterior (AP), and superior-inferior (SI) directions respectively. Residual error for the 5 patients with a weekly correction protocol was -0.1 +/- 0.2 cm (RL), 0.0 +/- 0.3 cm (AP), and 0.0 +/- 0.2 cm (SI). Intrafractional translation errors were small, amounting to 0.0 +/- 0.1 cm, -0.1 +/- 0.2 cm, and 0.0 +/- 0.1 cm in the RL, AP, and SI directions respectively. In the sagittal and coronal views respectively, interfractional rotational errors were -1.1 +/- 1.7 degrees and -0.5 +/- 0.9 degrees, and intrafractional rotational errors were 0.3 +/- 0.6 degrees and 0.2 +/- 0.5 degrees. No significant correlation was seen between translational and rotational data. The OBI image data were used to study setup error in the head-and-neck patients. Nonzero systematic errors were seen in the interfractional translational and rotational data, but not in the intrafractional data, indicating that the mask is better at maintaining head position than at reproducing it.
Keywords: radiation dose; methodology; sensitivity and specificity; reproducibility; reproducibility of results; radiotherapy dosage; evaluation; instrumentation; head and neck neoplasms; radiography; radiotherapy planning, computer-assisted; radiotherapy, conformal; equipment design; computer assisted radiotherapy; magnetic and electromagnetic equipment; particle accelerators; head and neck tumor; equipment; equipment failure analysis
Journal Title: Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics
Volume: 8
Issue: 4
ISSN: 1526-9914
Publisher: American College of Medical Physics  
Date Published: 2007-09-01
Start Page: 28
End Page: 44
Language: English
PUBMED: 18449150
PROVIDER: scopus
DOI/URL:
Notes: --- - Article; Proceedings Paper - 47th Annual Meeting of the American-Society-for-Therapeutic-Radiology-and-Oncology - OCT 16-20, 2005 - Denver, CO - "Cited By (since 1996): 4" - "Export Date: 17 November 2011" - "Source: Scopus"
Citation Impact
MSK Authors
  1. Linda Xueqi Hong
    88 Hong
  2. Nancy Y. Lee
    889 Lee
  3. Howard I Amols
    157 Amols
  4. Margie A Hunt
    287 Hunt
  5. C Clifton Ling
    331 Ling