TURKISH JOURNAL OF ONCOLOGY 2008 , Vol 23 , Num 3
The effect of intravenous contrast agent on lung cancer treatment planning with different systems
Merdan FAYDA,1 Ayşegül YILDIRIM,1 Necla TARPICI,2 Görkem AKSU,1 Aydın ÇAKIR3
1 Kocaeli Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi, Radyasyon Onkolojisi Anabilim Dalı, İzmit
2 Konya Özel Radyasyon Onkolojisi Merkezi, Konya
3 İstanbul Üniversitesi Onkoloji Enstitüsü Tıbbi Radyofizik Bilim Dalı, İstanbul
OBJECTIVES

The effects of intravenous contrast agent on two different 3D conformal radiotherapy treatment planning systems with different algorithms were studied.

METHODS
Contrast-enhanced and non-contrast computed tomography (CT) data sets belonging to a lung cancer patients were studied with XiO (CMS) and Eclipse™ (Varian). The convolution, Clarkson, fast superposition and standard superposition algorithms of XiO and modified Batho, Batho power law and equivalent TAR algorithms of Eclipse were studied with different field sizes and angles. The correlations between the changes of monitor units (MU) with both field sizes and total Hounsfield unit (HU) changes were investigated.

RESULTS
The mean MU change was +1.3% (-1% to +3.2%). There was a strong linear correlation between HU and MU changes of XiO algorithms (r2=0.79) and no correlation in Eclipse.

CONCLUSION
Although 3D planning of the lung could be done with contrasted CT dataset, according to our findings, it should ideally be planned with non-contrast CT fusing with created volumes in contrasted ones. Keywords : Lung cancer; contrast agent, treatment planning system; 3D radiotherapy