Quantitative analysis of the intra-beam respiratory motion with baseline drift for respiratory-gating lung stereotactic body radiation therapy

Abstract

This study aimed to quantitatively clarify the baseline drift for each respiratory cycle in two respiratory-gating methods using the intra-beam respiratory motion data of lung cancer patients. The residual motion and dose distribution were calculated based on intra-beam respiratory motion data with the baseline drift. To quantify the baseline drift $\Delta$ during irradiation, it was defined as the inclination between the detected expiration point and the expiration point in the next cycle in the anterior-posterior (AP), cranial-caudal (CC) and left-right (LR) directions obtained using an in-house programme. The baseline drift value reached up to 0.74 mm/s in the CC direction as per the respiratory motion data of 10 patients. The homogeneity index (HI) of the phase-gating method tended to increase because the target was irradiated even when the amplitude position of the target differed from period to period. In contrast, the amplitude-gating method enabled irradiation considering the amplitude position of the target because the gating window was set considering the amplitude position of the respiratory motion. The respiratory-gating methods and respiratory phase in respiratory-gating lung stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) must be determined based on the respiratory motion of the patients.

Keywords: baseline drift; residual motion; respiratory-gating method; stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT).