Abstract
Background and aim Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging has been increasingly adopted in the field of radiotherapy, and the most advanced MR image-guided radiotherapy is known as MR-guided online adaptive radiotherapy (MRgOART), which integrates MRI and linac systems. Few attempts have yet been made to directly compare treatment outcomes between the MRgOART and standard computed tomography (CT)-guided radiotherapy (CTgRT). Besides, it is reported that the biologically equivalent dose (BED) may be a good predictor of the local control (LC) and the overall survival (OS) for liver tumors. The purpose of this study is to compare the BEDs between the MRgOART and the CTgRT by way of virtual isotoxic planning for liver tumors. The hypothesis of this study is therefore that the MRgOART increases LC and OS as compared to the CTgRT. Materials and methods Using the five patient cases available, isotoxic planning was performed. For CTgRT, an internal target volume (ITV) was defined, and the planning target volume (PTV) was created by adding an isotropic margin of 10 mm. For MRgRT, a gross tumor volume (GTV) was defined, and the PTV was created by adding an isotropic margin of 5 mm. Each tumor size was virtually adjusted so that the CTgRT plans resulted in BED <100 Gy under the condition that the nearest organs at risk receive maximum tolerated doses. Subsequently, the BED was recalculated for MRgOART plans with the adjusted tumor size. Results and discussion It was found that the BEDs of the MRgOART plans always exceeded 100 Gy and were approximately 20 Gy larger than those of the corresponding CTgRT plans. Literature shows that superior overall survival rates for liver tumors were observed when BED was >100 Gy as compared to BED <100 Gy, suggesting that MR-guided adaptive planning may potentially lead to better treatment outcomes for liver tumors. We have also observed a case where the duodenum largely moved and abutted the liver after the CT images were acquired, indicating a significant disadvantage of the standard CTgRT because such abutting is not observable by the cone-beam CT immediately before treatment. Conclusion A highly accelerated evidence-creation procedure to suggest the clinical superiority of MRgOART has been arguably proposed with promising results. The sample size is small and limits the extent to which the findings in this study can be generalized. Further virtual clinical trials within the radiotherapy community are awaited with more clinical outcomes data.