Abstract
PURPOSE: To propose an efficient collimator angle optimization method by combining island blocking (IB) and parked gap (PG) problem to reduce the radiotherapy dose for normal tissue. The reduction will be done with single-isocenter multi-lesion volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) for the stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) of liver cancer. METHODS: A novel collimator angle optimization algorithm was developed based on the two-dimensional projection of targets on a beam's eye view (BEV) plane as a function of gantry and collimator angle. This optimization algorithm minimized the sum of the combined IB and PG (IB & PG) areas from all gantry angles for each arc. For comparison, two SBRT plans were respectively generated for each of the 20 retrospective liver cancer cases with multiple lesions. One plan was optimized using the IB & PG algorithm, and the other plan was optimized with a previously reported optimization algorithm that only considered the IB area. Plans were then evaluated and compared using typical dosimetric metrics. RESULTS: With the comparable target coverage, IB & PG plans had significantly lower D(500cc), D(700cc), mean dose (D(mean)), and V(15) of normal liver tissues when compared to IB plans. The median percent reductions were 3.32% to 5.36%. The D(1cc), D(5cc), and D(mean) for duodenum and small intestine in IB & PG plans were significantly reduced in a range from 7.60% up to 16.03%. Similarly, the median integral dose was reduced by 3.73%. Furthermore, the percentage of normal liver D(mean) sparing when IB & PG plans compared to IB plans, was found to be positively correlated (ρ = 0.669, P = 0.001) with the inter-target distance. CONCLUSION: The proposed IB & PG algorithm has been demonstrated to outperform the IB algorithm in almost all normal tissue sparing, and the magnitude of liver sparing was positively correlated with inter-target distance.