Image guided respiratory gated hypofractionated Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (H-SBRT) for liver and lung tumors: Initial experience

To evaluate our initial experience with image guided respiratory gated H-SBRT for liver and lung tumors. The system combines a stereoscopic x-ray imaging system (ExacTrac® X-Ray 6D) with a dedicated conformal stereotactic radiosurgery and radiotherapy linear accelerator (Novalis) and ExacTrac® Adaptive Gating for dynamic adaptive treatment. Moving targets are located and tracked by x-ray imaging of implanted fiducial markers defined in the treatment planning computed tomography (CT). The marker position is compared with the position in verification stereoscopic x-ray images, using fully automated marker detection software. The required shift for a correct, gated set-up is calculated and automatically applied. We present our acceptance testing and initial experience in patients with liver and lung tumors. For treatment planning CT and Fluorodeoxyglucose-Positron Emission Tomography (FDG-PET) as well as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) taken at free breathing and expiration breath hold with internal and external fiducials present were used. Patients were treated with 8-11 consecutive fractions to a dose of 74.8-79.2 Gy. Phantom tests demonstrated targeting accuracy with a moving target to within ±1 mm. Inter- and intrafractional patient set-up displacements, as corrected by the gated set-up and not detectable by a conventional set-up, were up to 30 mm. Verification imaging to determine target location during treatment showed an average marker position deviation from the expected position of up to 4 mm on real patients. This initial evaluation shows the accuracy of the system and feasibility of image guided real-time respiratory gated H-SBRT for liver and lung tumors.