Differences in effective target volume between various techniques of accelerated partial breast irradiation.

PURPOSE: Different cavity expansions are used to define the clinical target volume (CTV) for accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) delivered via balloon brachytherapy (1 cm) vs. three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT) (1.5 cm). Previous studies have argued that the CTVs generated by these different margins are effectively equivalent. In this study, we use deformable registration to assess the effective CTV treated by balloon brachytherapy on clinically representative 3D-CRT planning images.

METHODS AND MATERIALS: Ten patients previously treated with the MammoSite were studied. Each patient had two computed tomography (CT) scans, one acquired before and one after balloon implantation. In-house deformable registration software was used to deform the MammoSite CTV onto the balloonless CT set. The deformed CTV was validated using anatomical landmarks common to both CT scans.

RESULTS: The effective CTV treated by the MammoSite was on average 7% ± 10% larger and 38% ± 4% smaller than 3D-CRT CTVs created using uniform expansions of 1 and 1.5 cm, respectively. The average effective CTV margin was 1.0 cm, the same as the actual MammoSite CTV margin. However, the effective CTV margin was nonuniform and could range from 5 to 15 mm in any given direction. Effective margins <1 cm were attributable to poor cavity-balloon conformance. Balloon size relative to the cavity did not significantly correlate with the effective margin.

CONCLUSION: In this study, the 1.0-cm MammoSite CTV margin treated an effective volume that was significantly smaller than the 3D-CRT CTV based on a 1.5-cm margin.