Improvement of a Planning Technique Based on Heuristic Target Shaping for Stereotactic Radiosurgery

Oh, Seungjong; Choi, Kyoung Sik; Song, Ju Young; Suh, Tae Suk

Abstract

Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) is a technique to deliver a high dose to a target region and a low dose to a critical organ through only one or a few irradiation. The SRS must be planned exactly. Currently the surgery plan is performed by trial and error method. There are many questions about the reliability and reproducibility of the plan result. This study improve each step of the Oh's method based on heuristic target shaping to obtain the better result. The target was reconstructed using cylinders with same height and the neighbored cylinders were combined according to the difference of each center and diameter. Then, spheres were packed within each cylinders by the packing rules. Two virtual targets were used to compare this method with Oh's method. As a result, the numbers of isocenter were successfully reduced - more than 36% and 26% - without serious differences of prescription isodose to tumour volume ratio (PITV) and maximum dose to prescription dose ratio (MDPD). This technique using cylinder piling and sphere packing will be a helpful tool to planner in stereotactic radiosurgery.