Comparing interplay effects in scanned proton therapy of lung cancer: Free breathing with various layer and volume rescanning versus respiratory gating with different gate widths

Pencil beam scanning (PBS) proton therapy significantly reduces the dose to normal tissue while maintaining uniform target coverage compared with passive scattering and intensity-modulated radiotherapy [1,2]. However, an active scanning beam for a moving tumor suffers from interplay effects [3]. A previous report showed that PBS plans with a commercial treatment planning system (TPS) do not consider interplay effects and may result in reduced target coverage and overdose to organs-at-risk (OARs) during actual irradiation [4].
Source: Physica Medica: European Journal of Medical Physics - Category: General Medicine Authors: Source Type: research