Combined Inter- and Intrafractional Plan Adaptation Using Fraction Partitioning in Magnetic Resonance-guided Radiotherapy Delivery

Magnetic resonance-guided radiation therapy (MRgRT) not only allows for superior soft-tissue setup and online MR-guidance during delivery but also for inter-fractional plan re-optimization or adaptation. This plan adaptation involves repeat MR imaging, organs at risk (OARs) re-contouring, plan prediction (i.e., recalculating the baseline plan on the anatomy of that moment), plan re-optimization, and plan quality assurance. In contrast, intrafractional plan adaptation cannot be simply performed by pausing delivery at any given moment, adjusting contours, and re-optimization because of the complex and composite nature of deformable dose accumulation. To overcome this limitation, we applied a practical workaround by partitioning treatment fractions, each with half the original fraction dose. In between successive deliveries, the patient remained in the treatment position and all steps of the initial plan adaptation were repeated. Thus, this second re-optimization served as an intrafractional plan adaptation at 50% of the total delivery. The practical feasibility of this partitioning approach was evaluated in a patient treated with MRgRT for locally advanced pancreatic cancer (LAPC). MRgRT was delivered in 40Gy in 10 fractions, with two fractions scheduled successively on each treatment day. The contoured gross tumor volume (GTV) was expanded by 3 mm, excluding parts of the OARs within this expansion to derive the planning target volume for daily re-optimization (PTV(OPT)). The baseline GTVV(95%) achieved in this patient was 80.0% to adhere to the high-dose constraints for the duodenum, stomach, and bowel (V(33 Gy) <1 cc and V(36 Gy) <0.1 cc). Treatment was performed on the MRIdian (ViewRay Inc, Mountain View, USA) using video-assisted breath-hold in shallow inspiration. The dual plan adaptation resulted, for each partitioned fraction, in the generation of Plan(PREDICTED1), Plan(RE-OPTIMIZED1 )(inter-fractional adaptation), Plan(PREDICTED2), and Plan(RE-OPTIMIZED2) (intrafractional adaptation). An offline analysis was performed to evaluate the benefit of inter-fractional versus intrafractional plan adaptation with respect to GTV coverage and high-dose OARs sparing for all five partitioned fractions. Interfractional changes in adjacent OARs were substantially larger than intrafractional changes. Mean GTV V(95%) was 76.8 ± 1.8% (Plan(PREDICTED1)), 83.4 ± 5.7% (Plan(RE-OPTIMIZED1)), 82.5 ± 4.3% (Plan(PREDICTED2)),and 84.4 ± 4.4% (Plan(RE-OPTIMIZED2)). Both plan re-optimizations appeared important for correcting the inappropriately high duodenal V(33 Gy) values of 3.6 cc (Plan(PREDICTED1)) and 3.9 cc (Plan(PREDICTED2)) to 0.2 cc for both re-optimizations. To a smaller extent, this improvement was also observed for V(25 Gy) values. For the stomach, bowel, and all other OARs, high and intermediate doses were well below preset constraints, even without re-optimization. The mean delivery time of each daily treatment was 90 minutes. This study presents the clinical application of combined inter-fractional and intrafractional plan adaptation during MRgRT for LAPC using fraction partitioning with successive re-optimization. Whereas, in this study, interfractional plan adaptation appeared to benefit both GTV coverage and OARs sparing, intrafractional adaptation was particularly useful for high-dose OARs sparing. Although all necessary steps lead to a prolonged treatment duration, this may be applied in selected cases where high doses to adjacent OARs are regarded as critical.