A Comparison of Two BNCT Treatment Planning Programs

There are two current ongoing phase-I BNCT clinical trials in the United States for GBM,1,2 one in Europe,3 and several protocols in Japan.4 The two U.S. sites, Harvard/MIT and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), employ two different treatment planning systems, MacNCTPlan5,6 and BNCT_RTPE,7,8 developed respectively at Harvard/MIT, and Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL). Both of these programs generate patient specific models from CT or MRI images which are used in neutron and photon transport calculations of dose rates within the patient’s head (or any other body part). These programs also allow visualization of dose rate distributions by superimposing the isodose-rate contours over the patient’s CT or MRI images, and construction of the dose volume histograms (DVHs) allowing the medical physicist and radiation oncologist to compare combinations of radiation beam orientations and weights. These two programs differ in the method of model composition and synthesis, user interface, neutron and photon cross sections, and Monte Carlo algorithms used in radiation transport calculations. Each of these differences is a potential source of discrepancies in calculated dose rates. The comparison of these two systems, since they are also used by other international BNCT researchers, is a step toward standardization of BNCT treatment planning.