Study on dose accumulation in IMRT for left breast cancer patients after radical mastectomy

Objective To investigate the changes of accumulated dose in target area and organs at risk (OARs) for radiotherapy of left breast cancer by deformable and rigid image registration. Methods A total of 16 left breast cancer patients treated with 6 MV X-ray IMRT were analyzed retrospectively. All targets included the lymph node drainage area and the chest wall. All patients underwent simulation of the primary positioning and repositioning to obtain CT images. Primary and secondary treatment plans were developed using primary positioning CT (CT1) and repositioning CT (CT2), denoted as Plan1 and Plan2 respectively. The dose distribution of Plan2 was mapped to CT1 with rigid and deformable registration from CT2 to CT1 and then added to the dose distribution of Plan1 to obtain Plan-rigid and Plan-deform, respectively. The dosimetric differences between targets and the OARs of the four plans were compared. Results The CTV volume on CT2 was reduced by 6.64% from that on CT1. The homogeneity index (HI) increased by 23.05% after deformation-based accumulation. The Dice similarity coefficients (DSCs) of the heart, left lung and right lung were lower than those before deformable registration (0.94±0.01 vs. 0.89±0.05, 0.96±0.01 vs. 0.91±0.03, and 0.96±0.01 vs. 0.92±0.03, respectively), and the differences were statistically significant (Z=-3.208, -3.533, -3.535, P 0.05), while the dose-volume indices in Plan-rigid were higher than that in Plan-deform. Conclusions Rigid registration is recommended in patients undergoing radical resection of left breast cancer with little change in the volume and dose-volume index of the target area and organs at risk. The dose-volume index of the initial intensity modulation plan can basically reflect the dose-volume statistics of both lungs and heart. Key words: Breast cancer; Dose addition; Deformation registration; Dose assessment; IMRT