ArticlePhysics and imaging in radiation oncology2024
Evaluating the effect of higher Monte Carlo statistical uncertainties on accumulated doses after daily adaptive fractionated radiotherapy in prostate cancer.
Article in Physics and imaging in radiation oncology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Dose calculation accuracy with extended CT scales near metal: phantom-patient evaluation using a beam-metal overlap metric.Radiation oncology (London, England) · 2026Article
- Impact of Voxel Grid Size and Statistical Uncertainty on Surface Depth Dose Via Various Planning Techniques and Immobilization Devices Using Monte Carlo Algorithm.Technology in cancer research & treatmentArticle
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background and purpose: Monte Carlo (MC) based dose calculations are widely used in radiotherapy with a low statistical uncertainty, being accurate but slow. Increasing the uncertainty accelerates the calculation, but reduces quality. In online adaptive planning, however, dose is recalculated every treatment fraction, potentially decreasing the cumulative calculation error. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of higher MC statistical uncertainty in the context of daily online plan adaptation. Materials and methods: For twenty prostate cancer patients, daily plans were simulated for 5 fractions and three modes of variation: rigid whole body translations, local-rigid prostate translations and local-rigid prostate rotations. For each mode and fraction, adaptive plans were generated from a clinical reference plan using three MC uncertainty values: 1 % (standard), 2 % and 3 % per plan. Dose-volume criteria were evaluated for accumulated doses, checking plan acceptability and comparing higher uncertainty plans to the standard. Results: Increasing the statistical uncertainty setting from 1 % to 2-3 % caused an accumulated median target D Conclusion: A 2-3 % MC statistical uncertainty was clinically feasible. Using a 2 % uncertainty setting reduced calculation times at the cost of limited relative dose-volume differences.
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