The dosimetric impact of replacing the TG-43 algorithm by model based dose calculation for liver brachytherapy

Abstract Purpose To compare treatment plans for interstitial high dose rate (HDR) liver brachytherapy with 192Ir calculated according to current-standard TG-43U1 protocol with model-based dose calculation following TG-186 protocol. Methods We retrospectively evaluated dose volume histogram (DVH) parameters for liver, organs at risk (OARs) and clinical target volumes (CTVs) of 20 patient cases diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) or metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). Dose calculations on a homogeneous water geometry (TG-43U1 surrogate) and on a computed tomography (CT) based geometry (TG-186) were performed using Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. The CTs were segmented based on a combination of assigning TG-186 recommended tissues to fixed Hounsfield Unit (HU) ranges and using organ contours delineated by physicians. For the liver, V 5Gy and V 10Gy were analysed, and for OARs the dose to 1 cubic centimeter (D 1cc). Target coverage was assessed by calculating V 150, V 100, V 95 and V 90 as well as D 95 and D 90. For every DVH parameter, median, minimum and maximum values of the deviations of TG-186 from TG-43U1 were analysed. Results TG-186-calculated dose was found to be on average lower than dose calculated with TG-43U1. The deviation of highest magnitude for liver parameters was -6.2% of the total liver volume. For OARs, the deviations were all smaller than or equal to -0.5 Gy. Target coverage deviations were as high as -1.5% of the total CTV volume and -3.5% of the prescribed dose. Conclusions In this study we found that TG-43U1 overestimates dose to liver tissue compared to TG-186. This finding may be of clinical importance for cases where dose to the whole liver is the limiting factor.