title: [Evaluation of the accuracy of the study on diverse techniques of planning radiotherapy of breast tumors].
abstract: The authors report the results of the analysis of several factors contributing to the accuracy of treatment planning in the radiation therapy of breast cancer. Different techniques (non-radiological vs CT-based) were used for the acquisition of patients' data; different methods (manual vs computerized) were employed for dose calculation. As for geometric parameters describing the external outline and target volume, mean differences were lower than 4%. Switching from a completely manual method to a CT-based one with computerized calculation, a 3.56% mean decrease in the value of reference isodose (p less than 0.01) was observed, together with a 3.87% mean increase in the estimated inhomogeneity (p less than 0.001). The non-CT-based outline of target volume exhibited geographic missing of inner portions of the target in 8/16 patients. Our results demonstrate that treatment planning procedures can be a significant source of clinically relevant inaccuracy, which may affect treatment outcome and tumor control.
authors.affiliation: Istituto del Radio, Spedali Civili, Brescia.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bignardi
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Frata
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Barbera
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Moretti
mesh_terms: D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000532:radiotherapy*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D011879:Radiotherapy Dosage; D011880:Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed