Dynamic lung phantom commissioning for 4D dose assessment in proton therapy

Anthropomorphic phantoms mimicking organ and tumor motion of patients are essential for end-to-end testing of motion mitigation techniques in ion beam therapy. In this work a commissioning procedure developed with the in-house designed respiratory phantom ARDOS (Advanced Radiation DOSimetry system) is presented. The phantom was tested and benchmarked for 4D dose verification in proton therapy, which included: characterization of the tissue equivalent materials from computed tomography (CT) imaging, assessment of dose calculation accuracy in critical structures of the phantom, and testing various detectors for proton dosimetry in the ARDOS phantom.

To prove the validity of the CT calibration curve, measured relative stopping powers (RSP) of the ARDOS materials were compared with values from CTs: original and overwritten with known material parameters. Override of rib- and soft-tissue phantom components improved RSP accuracy while inhomogeneous lung tissue, represented by the balsa wood, was better modelled by the CT Hounsfield units.

Monte Carlo (MC) dose calculations were benchmarked against measurements with a reference Farmer chamber embedded in ARDOS material samples showing less than 3% relative dose difference. Differences between MC calculated dose distributions and those calculated by analytical algorithms for the ARDOS geometry were higher than 20% of the prescribed dose, depending on the position in the phantom.

Pinpoint ionization chambers and thermoluminescence dosimeters showed differences of up to 5.5% compared to MC dose calculations for all lung setups in the static phantom. They were also able to detect dose distortions due to motion. EBT3 film dosimetry was shown to be suitable for 2D relative dose characterization, which could provide extended information on dose distributions in the penumbra area.

The presented methodology and results can be used for drafting general recommendations for dynamic phantom commissioning, which is an essential step towards end-to-end evaluation of motion mitigation techniques in ion beam therapy. (paper)