SU-C-BRA-06: Developing Clinical and Quantitative Guidelines for a 4DCT-Ventilation Functional Avoidance Clinical Trial

Purpose: 4DCT-ventilation is an exciting new imaging modality that uses 4DCTs to calculate lung ventilation. Because 4DCTs are acquired as part of routine care, calculating 4DCT-ventilation allows for lung function evaluation without additional cost or inconvenience to the patient. Development of a clinical trial is underway at our institution to use 4DCT-ventilation for thoracic functional avoidance with the idea that preferential sparing of functional lung regions can decrease pulmonary toxicity. The purpose of our work was to develop the practical aspects of a 4DCT-ventilation functional avoidance clinical trial including: 1.assessing patient eligibility 2.developing trial inclusion criteria and 3.developing treatment planning and dose-function evaluation strategies. Methods: 96 stage III lung cancer patients from 2 institutions were retrospectively reviewed. 4DCT-ventilation maps were calculated using the patient’s 4DCTs, deformable image registrations, and a density-change-based algorithm. To assess patient eligibility and develop trial inclusion criteria we used an observer-based binary end point noting the presence or absence of a ventilation defect and developed an algorithm based on the percent ventilation in each lung third. Functional avoidance planning integrating 4DCT-ventilation was performed using rapid-arc and compared to the patient’s clinically used plan. Results: Investigator-determined clinical ventilation defects were present in 69% of patients. Our regional/lung-thirdsmore » ventilation algorithm identified that 59% of patients have lung functional profiles suitable for functional avoidance. Compared to the clinical plan, functional avoidance planning was able to reduce the mean dose to functional lung by 2 Gy while delivering comparable target coverage and cord/heart doses. Conclusions: 4DCT-ventilation functional avoidance clinical trials have great potential to reduce toxicity, and our data suggest that 59% of lung cancer patients have lung function profiles suitable for functional avoidance. Our study used a retrospective evaluation of a large lung cancer patient database to develop the practical aspects of a 4DCT-ventilation functional avoidance clinical trial. (R.C., E.C., T.G.), NIH Research Scientist Development Award K01-CA181292 (R.C.), and State of Colorado Advanced Industries Accelerator Grant (Y.V.)« less