A New Technique Using 4DCT Scans to Create Custom Cardiac Blocks for Left-Sided Breast Cancer Treatments

For patients who receive treatment for left breast cancer, cardiac toxicity increases with increased radiation dose to the heart. A new method was developed using 4-dimensional computed tomography (CT) scans to improve custom cardiac blocks to minimize heart dose.

Four-dimensional CT scans were acquired, and a maximum intensity projection (MIP) heart was contoured for 20 patients. Custom heart blocks were created to fully block the MIP heart volume. A heart block based on the standard free-breathing (FB) CT image was retrospectively created. Differences in heart block sizes were compared. Differences in heart block areas and dose statistics were analyzed.

In all 20 cases, the heart block created using the 4-dimensional scan had a larger area than the corresponding FB block. The mean increase in multileaf collimator coverage was 3.9 mm (range, 0.5-20.1 mm). The mean increase in the area of the heart block was 2.58 cm² (range, 0.22-6.65 cm²). The dose-volume histogram showed that the MIP heart received 17.8 cGy (range, 0.02-70.3 cGy) more than the FB heart on average. Replanning with an FB heart block showed that the mean dose to the MIP heart increased by 16.2 cGy (range, 1.8-44.8 cGy) compared with the FB heart dose.

Four-dimensional heart blocks accounting for intrinsic respiratory motion and cardiac motion were greater in size than FB heart blocks. These larger blocks resulted from the larger contour created from the MIP image and blocked more dose to the heart. This technique for improving custom heart blocks can be easily implemented with 4DCT machine capabilities that are currently available in clinical practice.