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Improving delivery efficiency using spots and energy layers reduction algorithms based on a large momentum acceptance
Wei Wang1, Xu Liu1, Zhiyong Yang2
1State Key Laboratory of Advanced Electromagnetic Engineering and Technology, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
Reducing treatment time in intensity-modulated proton therapy (IMPT) is crucial for patient comfort and treatment efficacy. This study demonstrates that using a large momentum acceptance (LMA) beamline with reduced spots and energy layers significantly shortens IMPT delivery times.
Area of Science:
- Medical Physics
- Radiation Oncology
- Particle Accelerator Technology
Background:
- Intensity-modulated proton therapy (IMPT) offers high plan quality but faces challenges in reducing delivery time.
- Shorter treatment durations enhance patient comfort, reduce costs, and improve efficiency.
- Reducing delivery time is critical for mitigating intra-fractional motion and improving radiotherapy accuracy, especially for moving tumors.
Purpose of the Study:
- To address the tradeoff between IMPT plan quality and delivery time.
- To investigate the potential of a large momentum acceptance (LMA) beamline for reducing treatment duration.
- To apply a novel method for reducing the number of spots and energy layers in IMPT plans.
Main Methods:
- Delivery time was analyzed by considering energy layer switching, spot traveling, and dose delivery times.
- A large momentum acceptance (LMA) beamline was utilized to decrease total delivery time through increased momentum spread and beam intensity.
- Objective function modifications (L1 and logarithm items) were implemented to promote sparsity in low-weighted spots and energy layers, enabling iterative reduction.
- Standard, reduced, and LMA-reduced plans were evaluated on prostate and nasopharyngeal cases.
Main Results:
- LMA-reduced plans achieved significant reductions in spots (up to 95.6%) and energy layers (up to 61.3%) compared to standard plans.
- Treatment delivery time was substantially shortened, from 34.5s to 8.6s for prostate cases and 163.8s to 53.6s for nasopharyngeal cases.
- LMA-reduced plans demonstrated comparable robustness to spot monitor unit errors but increased sensitivity to spot position uncertainty.
Conclusions:
- The combination of LMA beamline and spot/energy layer reduction effectively improves IMPT delivery efficiency.
- This strategy shows promise for enhancing motion mitigation techniques in the treatment of moving tumors.
- Further research may be needed to optimize robustness against delivery uncertainties.
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