Dose deviations induced by respiratory motion for radiotherapy of lung tumors: Impact of CT reconstruction, plan complexity, and fraction size

A thorax phantom was used to assess radiotherapy dose deviations induced by respiratory motion of the target volume. Both intensity modulated and static, non‐modulated treatment plans were planned on CT scans of the phantom. The plans were optimized using various CT reconstructions, to investigate whether they had an impact on robustness to target motion during delivery. During irradiation, the target was programmed to simulate respiration‐induced motion of a lung tumor, using both patient‐specific and sinusoidal motion patterns in three dimensions. Dose was measured in the center of the target using an ion chamber. Differences between reference measurements with a stationary target and dynamic measurements were assessed. Possible correlations between plan complexity metrics and measured dose deviations were investigated. The maximum observed motion‐induced dose differences were 7.8% and 4.5% for single 2 Gy and 15 Gy fractions, respectively. The measurements performed with the largest target motion amplitude in the superior–inferior direction yielded the largest dosimetric deviations. For 2 Gy fractionation schemes, the summed dose deviation after 33 fractions is likely to be less than 2%. Measured motion‐induced dose deviations were significantly larger for one CT reconstruction compared to all the others. Static, non‐modulated plans showed superior robustness to target motion during delivery. Moderate correlations between the modulation complexity score applied to VMAT (MCSv) and measured dose deviations were found for 15 Gy SBRT treatment plans. Correlations between other plan complexity metrics and measured dose deviations were not found.