Dosimetric evaluation of MR-derived synthetic-CTs for MR-only proton treatment planning

PURPOSE: To evaluate proton dose calculation accuracy of optimized pencil beam scanning (PBS) plans on MR-derived synthetic-CTs for prostate patients. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Ten patient datasets with both a CT and an MRI were planned with opposed lateral proton beams optimized to single field uniform dose under an IRB-approved study. The proton plans were created on CT datasets generated by a commercial synthetic CT-based software called MRCAT (MR for Calculating ATtenuation) routinely used in our clinic for photon-based MR-only planning. A standard prescription of 79.2 Gy (RBE) and 68.4 Gy (RBE) was used for intact prostate and prostate bed cases, respectively. Proton plans were first generated and optimized using the MRCAT synthetic-CT (syn-CT), and then recalculated on the planning CT rigidly aligned with the syn-CT (aligned-CT) and a deformed planning CT (deformed-CT), which was deformed to match outer contour between syn-CT and aligned-CT. The same beam arrangement, total MUs, MUs/spot, spot positions were used to recalculate dose on deformed-CT and aligned-CT without renormalization. DVH analysis was performed on aligned-CT, deformed-CT, and syn-CT to compare D98%, V100%, V95% for PTV, PTVeval, and GTV as well as V70Gy, V50Gy for OARs. RESULTS: The relative percentage dose difference between syn-CT and deformed-CT, were (0.17 +/- 0.33 %) for PTVeval D98% and (0.07 +/- 0.1 %) for CTV D98%. Rectum V70Gy, V50Gy, and Bladder V70Gy were (2.76 +/- 4.01 %), (11.6 +/- 11.2 %), and (3.41 +/- 2.86 %), respectively for the syn-CT, and (3.23 +/- 3.63 %), (11.3 +/- 8.18 %), and (3.29 +/- 2.76 %), respectively for the deformed-CT, and (1.37 +/- 1.84 %), (8.48 +/- 6.67 %), and (4.91 +/- 3.65 %), respectively for aligned-CT. CONCLUSION: Dosimetric analysis shows that MR-only proton planning is feasible using syn-CT based on current clinical margins that account for a range uncertainty.