Abstract
Purpose: To compare dose-volume (DVH) and energy minimization-based (EM) optimization for prostate cancer cases. Methods: A dozen of prostate plans were retrospectively studied. For each case two IMRT plans were generated, one with DVH and the other with EM objective cost function. Those different objective functions were used only for the organs at risk (OARs), while target objectives were achieved through DVH cost functions. The plans used the same beam angles, maximum number of segments per plan, minimum segment area and MUs per segment. Both plans were normalized such that 95% of the PTV was covered by the same prescription dose. After prescription was achieved, doses to the OARs were iteratively lowered until the standard deviation of the dose across the PTV was ~3.5%. Plan quality was evaluated by several dose indices (DIs). A DI represents the dose delivered to certain volume of a structure. Tallied DIs were for rectum and bladder 10%, 40%, 60% volumes, and 1% volumes of the femoral heads as surrogate for maximum doses. Statistical significance in the differences among DIs was quantified with two-tailed paired t-tests. Results: On average EM plans performed better than DVH plans. Statistically significant dose reduction in rectum DI10, DI40, and DI60, were 2.6%, 25.7%, and 35.9%, respectively. For bladder DI10, DI40, and DI60 the differences were 1.1%, 20.8%, and 29.7%. Left and right femoral head DI1s were better by 33.8% and 27.8% in EM plans. The quoted dose reduction is with respect to EM absolute doses for the DIs. Conclusion: The performance of EM optimization with respect to DVH optimization is patient and DI dependent. While in some cases specific DIs were better with DVH optimization, on average the energy minimization allows better (ranging from 1% to ~40%) OAR sparing than DVH optimization. NIH-NCI.
