Patients
Twelve consecutive rectal cancer patients eligible for a prescribed dose of 5 x 5 Gy according to Dutch guidelines19 were scheduled for external beam radiotherapy (Ethos, Varian Medical Systems, Palo Alto, USA) between June 2020 and February 2021. Exclusion criteria were hip prosthesis on both sides and an inability to lie still at the treatment table for a period of 30 minutes. Patient compliance with respect to bladder filling and total treatment time were monitored.
Reference CT and target volumes
A reference CT was acquired with a drinking instruction aiming at a comfortably filled bladder. To achieve this, patients were asked to void the bladder 1.5 hours before the scheduled CT appointment and subsequently drink 0.5 liter of fluid. All patients were positioned supine using a knee support and with arms raised over the head using a thorax support (Thorax support, MacroMedics). All patients received intra venous contrast and female patients with distal tumors vaginal contrast as well.
Clinical target volumes were delineated (Velocity 4.1, Varian Medical Systems) using the national delineation guidelines following Valentini et al. (Fig. 1)20. Next to the GTV (tumor and positive lymph nodes) the radiation oncologist separately delineated the CTV upper and lower mesorectum (divided at the base of bladder), presacral space and left and right elective lymph node regions. Organs at risks (OAR) were delineated by Radiation Therapists (RTTs) according to RTOG guidelines as well as the rectum. Target volumes were reviewed by a second expert radiation oncologist.
Margins
In all directions for all CTVs a PTV margin of 5 mm was used, with the exception in the cranial direction of the presacral, mesorectum upper and lymph node CTV and for the caudal direction of the mesorectum lower CTV. Because it was expected to be difficult to discern the cranial and caudal borders of the target volumes on CBCT it was decided to use a PTV margin of 8 mm in these cases.
Treatment planning
The planning CT and delineations were exported from Velocity to Aria (Varian Medical System, version 16.00.00). In Ethos Treatment Management (Varian Medical Systems, version 02.00.10) a template was loaded with a departmental prioritized list of clinical goals. These clinical goals consisted of the evaluation objectives that were used for plan evaluation, as specified in the clinical protocol. Additionally, in order to achieve a more desirable dose distribution than achieved by only supplying the evaluation objectives, also optimization objectives were added as clinical goals in the template. The CT was imported into Ethos from Aria, after which the body contour was automatically delineated as well as the bony structures. If present, gas pockets and regions with contrast fluid were delineated and a material assignment was applied, where water was used as material. Next a preview of the dose distribution was automatically generated by the system. This dose preview was generated using a fluence optimized nine beams IMRT plan (system assigned) with the provided clinical goals as input. Based on the dose preview the clinical goals that were used as optimization objectives were adjusted to further improve the plan as routine practice for all patients. Subsequently, the final clinical goals and material assignments were used by the system to generate multiple deliverable IMRT and VMAT plans with fixed beam setup. From these plans the most suitable plan was selected as reference plan and approved by a radiation oncologist. As part of the QA protocol, an independent dose calculation was performed (Mobius3D 3.1, Varian Medical Systems) on the reference plan. The pass rate was required to be larger than 90%, which indicated the percentage of voxels with gamma < 1 (3%/3mm, where the percentage was relative to the maximum dose and only voxels with a dose of more than 10% of the maximum dose were taken into account). In addition, the reference plan was delivered to a phantom (Octavius 4D, PTW, Germany) and a pass rate of at least 90% was required (gamma 3%/3 mm, where the percentage was relative to the local dose and only voxels with more than 10% of the maximum dose were taken into account).
Adaptive Workflow
For all patients and all fractions one physicist, one radiation oncologist and two RTTs were present at the treatment machine. RTTs were in charge of running the software and adjusted structures under supervision of the radiation oncologist. For every patient, prior to the first treatment session, a 30-minute timeslot was scheduled to discuss patient specific clinical target volumes and reference plan to avoid discussions during the online adaptive workflow. Because both radiation oncologist and two RTTs were evaluating contours on a single monitor a checklist was developed to streamline and order this process (Supplement 1). A flowchart of the adaptive workflow on the treatment machine is provided in Fig. 2.
After patient setup the first CBCT was acquired (scatter grid, 125 kV, 1080 mAs, iterative reconstruction, extended FOV if the CTV in CC direction exceeds 18 cm with a maximum of 25 cm, matrix 512x512).
The system generated a synthetic CT by deforming the pretreatment planning CT to the CBCT using mutual information. The resulting vector field was used by the system to propagate the body contour, bony structures, and material override structures from the pretreatment planning CT to the synthetic CT.
Subsequently, the system generated delineations using Artificial Intelligence of the following pelvic organs: rectum and bladder. In this system these structures are called ‘influencer structures’ as they influence the deformation of the target volumes using structure-guided deformable registration. If necessary, these delineations were adjusted by the RTT.
In the following step the system combined the deformation vector field and the influencer structures to automatically propagate the target volumes from the pretreatment planning CT to the CBCT. At the moment the system determined the target volumes of the patients current anatomy it presented these target structures to the users and at the same time started 1) generating a newly optimized treatment plan using the beam setup and clinical goals of the reference plan and 2) calculating the dose distribution of the unaltered reference plan but using a isocenter translation aligning the target volumes on pretreatment planning CT and those propagated to the CBCT. In both calculations the system used the patients anatomy as represented by the synthetic CT including body contour and material assignments. The newly created plan was called the adapted plan, whereas and the reference plan recalculated on current anatomy was referred to as the scheduled plan.
If necessary, the RTT adjusted the propagated target volumes yielding a restart of 1) and 2) described above, at the moment the adjusted the target volumes were approved.
RTTs, together with the radiation oncologist and physicist, evaluated both plans by comparing the clinical goals and the dose distribution, after which the best plan was selected.
After approval of the selected treatment plan a second CBCT scan (same variables as first CBCT except for 540 mAs) was acquired to verify if the target volumes were still within the PTV. If the table displacement based on a bony anatomy registration to the first CBCT scan was more than 1 mm in any direction a table translation was applied.
Concurrently, an independent calculation of the dose distribution was done as part of our QA protocol (Mobius, Varian Medical Systems), where a pass rate of 90% was required (gamma 3%/3mm). Additionally, as a sanity check, the number of monitor units (MU) of the selected plan was compared to the number of MU of the reference plan.
After treatment delivery a third, post RT CBCT scan was acquired to again check if the target volume, as visible on the post treatment CBCT scan was inside the PTV of the plan used for treatment.
Timing of each step was captured to provide an overview as well as the number of times the target volumes needed to be adjusted by the users. Since this was a novel procedure for our department with no extensive clinical experience, unplanned events were recorded.