Fully automated volumetric modulated arc therapy plan generation for prostate cancer patients

Purpose To develop and evaluate fully automated volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) treatment planning for prostate cancer patients, avoiding manual trial-and-error tweaking of plan parameters by dosimetrists. Methods and Materials A system was developed for fully automated generation of VMAT plans with our commercial clinical treatment planning system (TPS), linked to the in-house developed Erasmus-iCycle multicriterial optimizer for preoptimization. For 30 randomly selected patients, automatically generated VMAT plans (VMAT auto) were compared with VMAT plans generated manually by 1 expert dosimetrist in the absence of time pressure (VMATman). For all treatment plans, planning target volume (PTV) coverage and sparing of organs-at-risk were quantified. Results All generated plans were clinically acceptable and had similar PTV coverage (V95% > 99%). For VMATauto and VMATman plans, the organ-at-risk sparing was similar as well, although only the former plans were generated without any planning workload. Conclusions Fully automated generation of high-quality VMAT plans for prostate cancer patients is feasible and has recently been implemented in our clinic.

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