Fig 1.
Schematic diagram showing the planning target volume (PTV) and beam arrangements for a representative patient.
A, the two continuous ~240° arcs that start at 300 ~ 305° and stop at 170 ~ 179° for lymph nodes in SCF; B, the four split sub-arcs obtained by splitting two ~240° arcs at 30° for the chest wall.
Fig 2.
Dose distribution in the axial (upper panels), coronal (middle panels) and sagittal (lower panels) planes for a typical patient with VMAT-5B (left panels) and VMAT-10B (right panels), respectively.
Table 1.
Dosimetric comparison between VMT-5B and VMAT-10B for the targets.
Table 2.
Dosimetric comparison between VMAT-5B and VMAT-10B for the OARs.
Table 3.
Absolute differences in CTV between the perturbed and original plans.
Fig 3.
Box plot of ΔD95% (A) and ΔD98% (B) in VMAT-5B (green) and VMAT-10B (red) with perturbations in the posterior, right and inferior directions.
Table 4.
Absolute differences in the heart between the perturbed and the original plans.
Table 5.
Absolute differences in the left lung between the perturbed and the original plans.
Fig 4.
Underdosed volumes in CTV (red) in VMAT-5B (orange) and VMAT-10B (dark green) with setup errors in the posterior direction for a typical patient.