Simulating intrafraction prostate motion with a random walk model

PURPOSE: Prostate motion during radiation therapy (ie, intrafraction motion) can cause unwanted loss of radiation dose to the prostate and increased dose to the surrounding organs at risk. A compact but general statistical description of this motion could be useful for simulation of radiation therapy delivery or margin calculations. We investigated whether prostate motion could be modeled with a random walk model. METHODS AND MATERIALS: Prostate motion recorded during 548 radiation therapy fractions in 17 patients was analyzed and used for input in a random walk prostate motion model. The recorded motion was categorized on the basis of whether any transient excursions (ie, rapid prostate motion in the anterior and superior direction followed by a return) occurred in the trace and transient motion. This was separately modeled as a large step in the anterior/superior direction followed by a returning large step. Random walk simulations were conducted with and without added artificial transient motion using either motion data from all observed traces or only traces without transient excursions as model input, respectively. RESULTS: A general estimate of motion was derived with reasonable agreement between simulated and observed traces, especially during the first 5 minutes of the excursion-free simulations. Simulated and observed diffusion coefficients agreed within 0.03, 0.2 and 0.3 mm(2)/min in the left/right, superior/inferior, and anterior/posterior directions, respectively. A rapid increase in variance at the start of observed traces was difficult to reproduce and seemed to represent the patient's need to adjust before treatment. This could be estimated somewhat using artificial transient motion. CONCLUSIONS: Random walk modeling is feasible and recreated the characteristics of the observed prostate motion. Introducing artificial transient motion did not improve the overall agreement, although the first 30 seconds of the traces were better reproduced. The model provides a simple estimate of prostate motion during delivery of radiation therapy.