Single-isocentre volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT) stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) improves treatment efficiency and patient compliance for patients with multiple liver metastases (MLM). However, the potential increase in dose spillage to normal liver tissue using a single-isocentre technique has not yet been studied. We comprehensively evaluated the quality of single- and multi-isocentre VMAT-SBRT for MLM and propose a RapidPlan-based automatic planning (AP) approach for MLM SBRT.
A total of 30 patients with MLM (two or three lesions) were selected for this retrospective study. We manually replanned all patients treated with MLM SBRT by using the single-isocentre (MUS) and multi-isocentre (MUM) techniques. Then, we randomly selected 20 MUS and MUM plans for training to generate the single-isocentre RapidPlan model (RPS) and the multi-isocentre RapidPlan model (RPM). Finally, we used data from the remaining 10 patients to validate RPS and RPM.
Compared with MUS, MUM reduced the mean dose delivered to the right kidney by 0.3 Gy. The mean liver dose (MLD) was 2.3 Gy higher for MUS compared with MUM. However, the monitor units, delivery time, and V20Gy of normal liver (liver-gross tumour volume) for MUM were significantly higher than for MUS. Based on validation, RPS and RPM slightly improved the MLD, V20Gy, normal tissue complications, and dose sparing to the right and left kidneys and spinal cord compared with manual plans (MUS vs RPS and MUM vs RPM), but RPS and RPM significantly increased monitor units and delivery time.
The single-isocentre VMAT-SBRT approach could be used for MLM to reduce treatment time and patient comfort at the cost of a small increase in the MLD. Compared with the manual plans, RapidPlan-based plans, especially RPS, have slightly improved quality.