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Updated: Aug 13, 2025
Voluntary Breath-hold Technique for Reducing Heart Dose in Left Breast Radiotherapy
Published on: July 3, 2014
Stability and reproducibility comparisons between deep inspiration breath-hold techniques for left-sided breast
David Parsons1, Mindy Joo2, Zohaib Iqbal1
1Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.
Purpose:
Deep inspiration breath-hold (DIBH) is crucial in reducing the lung and cardiac dose for treatment of left-sided breast cancer. We compared the stability and reproducibility of two DIBH techniques: Active Breathing Coordinator (ABC) and VisionRT (VRT).
Materials And Methods:
We examined intra- and inter-fraction positional variation of the left lung. Eight left-sided breast cancer patients were monitored with electronic portal imaging during breath-hold (BH) at every fraction. For each patient, half of the fractions were treated using ABC and the other half with VRT, with an equal amount starting with either ABC or VRT. The lung in each portal image was delineated, and the variation of its area was evaluated. Intrafraction stability was evaluated as the mean coefficient of variation (CV) of the lung area for the supraclavicular (SCV) and left lateral (LLat) field over the course of treatment. Reproducibility was the CV for the first image of each fraction. Daily session time and total imaging monitor units (MU) used in patient positioning were recorded.
Results:
The mean intrafraction stability across all patients for the LLat field was 1.3 ± 0.7% and 1.5 ± 0.9% for VRT and ABC, respectively. Similarly, this was 1.5 ± 0.7% and 1.6 ± 0.8% for VRT and ABC, respectively, for the SCV field. The mean interfraction reproducibility for the LLat field was 11.0 ± 3.4% and 14.9 ± 6.0% for VRT and ABC, respectively. Similarly, this was 13.0 ± 2.5% and 14.8 ± 9% for VRT and ABC, respectively, for the SCV. No difference was observed in the number of verification images required for either technique.
Conclusions:
The stability and reproducibility were found to be comparable between ABC and VRT. ABC can have larger interfractional variation with less feedback to the treating therapist compared to VRT as shown in the increase in geometric misses at the matchline.
