Virtual simulation of a boost field in adjuvant radiotherapy of the breast.
OBJECTIVE
In CT-based adjuvant radiotherapy of the breast, virtual simulation techniques have been developed. This paper demonstrates a simple virtual simulation of a boost field.


METHODS
41 fields were planned virtually, 26 as electron beams, 15 as tangential photon beams.


RESULTS
Depending on the user's expertise the geometric accuracy was high; possible sources of error are illustrated. Resulting field sizes tended to be slightly larger compared to conventional simulation when applying the same rules of field definition. Differences in focus-skin distances with consecutive divergence effects as well as partial volume effects were discussed to be causal.


CONCLUSIONS
Virtual simulation of a boost field has the potential to elegantly link the simplicity of a conventional simulation with the accurate tumor bed identification provided by a CT data set. It was shown to be feasible and favorable with regard to the patient, the medical staff, and the simulator time. Moreover, it offers a visualization of dose distributions, which was found helpful in some cases.
Department of Radiotherapy, Campus Mitte, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. andreas.kaiser@charite.de
Andreas
A
Kaiser
Lutz
L
Moser
Wolf
W
Kuschke
Margit
M
Hinkelbein
André
A
Buchali
Volker
V
Budach
D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000532:radiotherapy*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D011857:Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D011874:Radiometry / Q000379:methods*; D011879:Radiotherapy Dosage; D011880:Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D018714:Radiotherapy, Adjuvant / Q000379:methods*; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014584:User-Computer Interface