Performance characterization of a novel hybrid dosimetry insert for simultaneous spatial, temporal, and...

Several (online) adaptive radiotherapy procedures are available to maximize healthy tissue sparing in the presence of inter/intrafractional motion during stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) on an MR-linac. The increased treatment complexity and the motion-delivery interplay during these treatments require MR-compatible motion phantoms with time-resolved dosimeters to validate end-to-end workflows. This is not possible with currently available phantoms.

Here, we demonstrate a new commercial hybrid film-scintillator cassette, combining high spatial resolution radiochromic film with four time-resolved plastic scintillator dosimeters (PSDs) in an MRI-compatible motion phantom.

First, the PSD's performance for consistency, dose linearity, and pulse repetition frequency (PRF) dependence was evaluated using an RW3 solid water slab phantom. We then demonstrated the MRI4D scintillator cassette's suitability for time-resolved and motion-included quality assurance for adapt-to-shape (ATS), trailing, gating, and multileaf collimator (MLC) tracking adaptations on a 1.5 T MR-linac. To do this, the cassette was inserted into the Quasar MRI^4D phantom, which we used statically or programmed with artificial and patient-derived motion. Simultaneously with dose measurements, the beam-gating latency was estimated from the time difference between the target entering/leaving the gating window and the beam-on/off times derived from the time-resolved dose measurements.

Experiments revealed excellent detector consistency (standard deviation $$ 0.6%), dose linearity (R² = 1), and only very low PRF dependence ( $$ 0.4%). The dosimetry cassette demonstrated a near-perfect agreement during an ATS workflow between the time-resolved PSD and treatment planning system (TPS) dose (0%-2%). The high spatial resolution film measurements confirmed this with a 1%/1-mm local gamma pass-rate of 90%. When trailing patient-derived prostate motion for a prostate SBRT delivery, the time-resolved cassette measurements demonstrated how trailing mitigated the motion-induced dose reductions from 1%-17% to 1%-2% compared to TPS dose. The cassette's simultaneously measured spatial dose distribution highlighted the dosimetric gain of trailing by improving the 3%/3-mm local gamma pass-rates from 80% to 97% compared to the static dose. Similarly, the cassette demonstrated the benefit of real-time adaptations when compensating patient-derived respiratory motion by showing how the TPS dose was restored from 2%-56% to 0%-12% (gating) and 1%-26% to 1%-7% (MLC tracking) differences. Larger differences are explainable by TPS-PSD coregistration uncertainty combined with a steep dose gradient outside the PTV. The cassette also demonstrated how the spatial dose distributions were drastically improved by the real-time adaptations with 1%/1-mm local gamma pass-rates that were increased from 8 to 79% (gating) and from 35 to 89% (MLC tracking). The cassette-determined beam-gating latency agreed within $$ 12 ms with the ground truth latency measurement. Film and PSD dose agreed well for most cases (differences relative to TPS dose $$ 4%), while film-PSD coregistration uncertainty caused relative differences of 5%-8%.

This study demonstrates the excellent suitability of a new commercial hybrid film-scintillator cassette for simultaneous spatial, temporal, and motion-included dosimetry.