Effect of the initial energy layer and spot placement parameters on IMPT delivery efficiency and plan quality

PURPOSE: Improving efficiency of intensity modulated proton therapy (IMPT) treatment can be achieved by shortening the beam delivery time. The purpose of this study is to reduce the delivery time of IMPT, while maintaining the plan quality, by finding the optimal initial proton spot placement parameters. METHODS: Seven patients previously treated in the thorax and abdomen with gated IMPT and voluntary breath‐hold were included. In the clinical plans, the energy layer spacing (ELS) and spot spacing (SS) were set to 0.6–0.8 (as a scale factor of the default values). For each clinical plan, we created four plans with ELS increased to 1.0, 1.2, 1.4, and SS to 1.0 while keeping all other parameters unchanged. All 35 plans (130 fields) were delivered on a clinical proton machine and the beam delivery time was recorded for each field. RESULTS: Increasing ELS and SS did not cause target coverage reduction. Increasing ELS had no effect on critical organ‐at‐risk (OAR) doses or the integral dose, while increasing SS resulted in slightly higher integral and selected OAR doses. Beam‐on times were 48.4 ± 9.2 (range: 34.1–66.7) seconds for the clinical plans. Time reductions were 9.2 ± 3.3 s (18.7 ± 5.8%), 11.6 ± 3.5 s (23.1 ± 5.9%), and 14.7 ± 3.9 s (28.9 ± 6.1%) when ELS was changed to 1.0, 1.2, and 1.4, respectively, corresponding to 0.76–0.80 s/layer. SS change had a minimal effect (1.1 ± 1.6 s, or 1.9 ± 2.9%) on the beam‐on time. CONCLUSION: Increasing the energy layers spacing can reduce the beam delivery time effectively without compromising IMPT plan quality; increasing the SS had no meaningful impact on beam delivery time and resulted in plan‐quality degradation in some cases.