1. Trade-off in healthy tissue sparing of FLASH and fractionation in stereotactic proton therapy of lung lesions with transmission beams.
- Author
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Habraken, Steven, Breedveld, Sebastiaan, Groen, Jort, Nuyttens, Joost, and Hoogeman, Mischa
- Subjects
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LUNG diseases , *PROTON therapy , *PROTON beams , *TISSUES , *CANCER treatment - Abstract
• OAR sparing through FLASH may be achieved in clinically realistic lung treatments. • 30% FLASH enhancement outweighs loss of fractionation and conformality. • Dose and dose-rate thresholds within a beam are critical for clinical translatability. Besides a dose-rate threshold of 40–100 Gy/s, the FLASH effect may require a dose > 3.5–7 Gy. Even in hypofractioned treatments, with all beams delivered in each fraction (ABEF), most healthy tissue is irradiated to a lower fraction dose. This can be circumvented by single-beam-per-fraction (SBPF) delivery, with a loss of healthy tissue sparing by fractionation. We investigated the trade-off between FLASH and loss of fractionation in SBPF stereotactic proton therapy of lung cancer and determined break-even FLASH-enhancement ratios (FERs). Treatment plans for 12 patients were generated. GTV delineations were available and a 5 mm GTV-PTV margin was applied. Equiangular arrangements of 3, 5, 7, and 9 244 MeV proton transmission beams were used. To facilitate SBPF, the number of fractions was equal to the number of beams. Iso-effective fractionation schedules with a single field uniform dose prescription were used: D 95%,PTV = 100%D pres per beam. All plans were evaluated in terms of dose to lung and conformity of dose to target of FLASH-enhanced biologically equivalent dose (EQD2). Compared to ABEF, SBPF resulted in a median increase of EQD2 mean to healthy lung of 56%, 58%, 55% and 54% in plans with 3, 5, 7 and 9 fractions respectively and of 236%, 78%, 50% and 41% in V 100% EQD2 , quantifying conformity. This can be compensated for by FERs of at least 1.28, 1.32, 1.30 and 1.23 respectively for EQD2 mean and 1.29, 1.18, 1.28 and 1.15 for V 100%,EQD2. A FLASH effect outweighing the loss of fractionation in SBPF may be achieved in stereotactic lung treatments. The trade-off with fractionation depends on the conditions under which the FLASH effect occurs. Better understanding of the underlying biology and the impact of delivery conditions is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2022
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