Gating and tracking, 4D in thoracic tumours

The limited ability to control for a tumour's location compromises the accuracy with which radiation can be delivered to tumour-bearing tissue. The resultant requirement for larger treatment volumes to accommodate target uncertainty restricts the radiation dose because more surrounding normal tissue is exposed. With image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT), these volumes can be optimized and tumoricidal doses may be delivered, achieving maximum tumour control with minimal complications. Moreover, with the ability of high precision dose delivery and real-time knowledge of the target volume location, IGRT has initiated the exploration of new indications in radiotherapy such as hypo-fractionated radiotherapy (or stereotactic body radiotherapy), deliberate inhomogeneous dose distributions coping with tumour heterogeneity (dose painting by numbers and biologically conformal radiation therapy), and adaptive radiotherapy. In short: 'individualized radiotherapy'. Tumour motion management, especially for thoracic tumours, is a particular problem in this context both for the delineation of tumours and organs at risk as well as during the actual treatment delivery. The latter will be covered in this paper with some examples based on the experience of the UZ Brussel. With the introduction of the NOVALIS system (BrainLAB, Feldkirchen, Germany) in 2000 and consecutive prototypes of the ExacTrac IGRT system, gradually a hypo-fractionation treatment protocol was introduced for the treatment of lung tumours and liver metastases evolving from motion-encompassing techniques towards respiratory-gated radiation therapy with audio-visual feedback and most recently dynamic tracking using the VERO system (BrainLAB, Feldkirchen, Germany). This evolution will be used to illustrate the recent developments in this particular field of research. (authors)