Apparatus dependence of normal brain tissue dose in stereotactic radiosurgery for multiple brain metastases

Technical improvements in commercially available radiosurgery platforms have made it practical to treat a large number of intracranial targets. The goal of this study was to investigate whether the dose to normal brain when planning radiosurgery to multiple targets is apparatus dependent.

The authors selected a single case involving a patient with 12 metastatic lesions widely distributed throughout the brain as visualized on contrast-enhanced CT. Target volumes and critical normal structures were delineated with Leksell Gamma Knife Perfexion software. The imaging studies including the delineated contours were digitally exported into the CyberKnife and Novalis multileaf collimator-based planning systems for treatment planning using identical target dose goals and dose-volume constraints. Subsets of target combinations (3, 6, 9, or 12 targets) were planned separately to investigate the relationship of number of targets and radiosurgery platform to the dose to normal brain.

Despite similar target dose coverage and dose to normal structures, the dose to normal brain was strongly apparatus dependent. A nonlinear increase in dose to normal brain volumes with increasing number of targets was also noted.

The dose delivered to normal brain is strongly dependent on the radiosurgery platform. How general this conclusion is and whether apparatus-dependent differences are related to differences in hardware design or differences in dose-planning algorithms deserve further investigation.