Journal Article

GSI-2025-00991

http://join2-wiki.gsi.de/foswiki/pub/Main/Artwork/join2_logo100x88.png Comprehensive Robustness Evaluation of Proton and Carbon-Ion Plans in Thoracic Cancer Treatment

Sheng, Y.GSI* ; Volz, L.GSI* ; Mao, J. ; Chen, J. ; Steinsberger, T.GSI* ; Wang, W. ; Sun, J. ; Han, R. ; Durante, M.GSI* ; Graeff, C. (Corresponding author)GSI*

2025
Particle Therapy Cooperative Group [Erscheinungsort nicht ermittelbar]

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Please use a persistent id in citations: doi:10.1016/j.ijpt.2025.101195  doi:10.15120/GSI-2025-00991

Abstract: To evaluate the impact of setup errors, range uncertainty, and respiratory motion on dose distributions for clinically delivered pencil beam scanning proton and carbon-ion plans.A retrospective analysis was conducted on 23 lung cancer and trachea adenoid cystic carcinoma patients who received treatment at our center. Plans were generated using Syngo with planning target volume-based optimization. Dose reconstruction was performed using TReatment planning for Particles 4D. The plans robustness evaluation was performed using two methods: a worst scenarios conventional evaluation (WSCE) with 21 scenarios and a worst scenarios statistical evaluation (WSSE) with 100 randomly sampled scenarios. On top of the 3D evaluation considering setup error and range error, a 4D evaluation was performed considering motion-induced error.The overall target dose ΔD95% was -2.37% ± 1.55% (mean ± standard deviation [SD]) of the prescribed dose (PD) and -2.62% ± 2.08% for 3DWSSE and 4DWSSE, respectively. The WSCE method often underestimated the dose by approximately 5% for ΔD95%. The induced uncertainties had limited impact on mean doses for Lungs-iGTV and heart. However, a ΔD1cc greater than 5% of PD was observed for the esophagus and trachea.Conventional robustness evaluation showed significantly reduced target coverage, yet it considers highly improbable worst-case scenarios. Comprehensive WSSE enables the identification of critical patients without compromising plan quality by avoiding overestimation and compensating for unrealistic error scenarios.

Keyword(s): Carbon therapy ; Motion mitigation ; Pencil beam scanning ; Proton therapy ; Robustness evaluation

Note: This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This project is funded by the International Postdoctoral Exchange Fellowship Program (CN 2020016)

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Contributing Institute(s):

1. Biophysik (BIO)
2. Collaboration FAIR: BIO (BIO@FAIR)

Research Program(s):

1. 633 - Life Sciences – Building Blocks of Life: Structure and Function (POF4-633) (POF4-633)
2. SUC-GSI-Darmstadt - Strategic university cooperation GSI-TU Darmstadt (SUC-GSI-DA) (SUC-GSI-DA)

Experiment(s):

1. no experiment theory work (theory)

Appears in the scientific report 2025

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Database coverage:
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