TY - JOUR

T1 - Quality assessment for VMAT prostate radiotherapy planning based on data envelopment analysis

AU - Lin, Kuan-Min

AU - Simpson, John

AU - Sasso, Giuseppe

AU - Raith, Andrea

AU - Ehrgott, Matthias

PY - 2013/8/21

Y1 - 2013/8/21

N2 - The majority of commercial radiotherapy treatment planning systems requiresplanners to iteratively adjust the plan parameters in order to find a satisfactoryplan. This iterative trial-and-error nature of radiotherapy treatment planningresults in an inefficient planning process and in order to reduce such inefficiency,plans can be accepted without achieving the best attainable quality.We proposea quality assessment method based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) toaddress this inefficiency. This method compares a plan of interest to a set ofpast delivered plans and searches for evidence of potential further improvement.With the assistance of DEA, planners will be able to make informed decisionson whether further planning is required and ensure that a plan is only acceptedwhen the plan quality is close to the best attainable one. We apply the DEAmethod to 37 prostate plans using two assessment parameters: rectal generalizedequivalent uniform dose (gEUD) as the input and D95 (the minimum dose thatis received by 95% volume of a structure) of the planning target volume (PTV)as the output. The percentage volume of rectum overlapping PTV is used toaccount for anatomical variations between patients and is included in themodelas a non-discretionary output variable. Five plans that are considered of lesserquality by DEA are re-optimized with the goal to further improve rectal sparing.After re-optimization, all five plans improve in rectal gEUD without clinicallyconsiderable deterioration of the PTV D95 value. For the five re-optimizedplans, the rectal gEUD is reduced by an average of 1.84 Gray (Gy) with only anaverage reduction of 0.07 Gy in PTV D95. The results demonstrate that DEAcan correctly identify plans with potential improvements in terms of the choseninput and outputs.

AB - The majority of commercial radiotherapy treatment planning systems requiresplanners to iteratively adjust the plan parameters in order to find a satisfactoryplan. This iterative trial-and-error nature of radiotherapy treatment planningresults in an inefficient planning process and in order to reduce such inefficiency,plans can be accepted without achieving the best attainable quality.We proposea quality assessment method based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) toaddress this inefficiency. This method compares a plan of interest to a set ofpast delivered plans and searches for evidence of potential further improvement.With the assistance of DEA, planners will be able to make informed decisionson whether further planning is required and ensure that a plan is only acceptedwhen the plan quality is close to the best attainable one. We apply the DEAmethod to 37 prostate plans using two assessment parameters: rectal generalizedequivalent uniform dose (gEUD) as the input and D95 (the minimum dose thatis received by 95% volume of a structure) of the planning target volume (PTV)as the output. The percentage volume of rectum overlapping PTV is used toaccount for anatomical variations between patients and is included in themodelas a non-discretionary output variable. Five plans that are considered of lesserquality by DEA are re-optimized with the goal to further improve rectal sparing.After re-optimization, all five plans improve in rectal gEUD without clinicallyconsiderable deterioration of the PTV D95 value. For the five re-optimizedplans, the rectal gEUD is reduced by an average of 1.84 Gray (Gy) with only anaverage reduction of 0.07 Gy in PTV D95. The results demonstrate that DEAcan correctly identify plans with potential improvements in terms of the choseninput and outputs.

U2 - 10.1088/0031-9155/58/16/5753

DO - 10.1088/0031-9155/58/16/5753

M3 - Journal article

VL - 58

SP - 5753

EP - 5769

JO - Physics in Medicine and Biology

JF - Physics in Medicine and Biology

SN - 1361-6560

IS - 16

ER -