High-resolution pulmonary ventilation and perfusion PET/CT allows for functionally adapted intensity modulated radiotherapy in lung cancer

Background and purpose: To assess the utility of functional lung avoidance using IMRT informed by four-dimensional (4D) ventilation/perfusion (V/Q) PET/CT. Materials and methods: In a prospective clinical trial, patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) underwent 4D-V/Q PET/CT scanning before 60 Gy of definitive chemoradiation. Both highly perfused (HPLung) and highly ventilated (HVLung) lung volumes were delineated using a 70th centile Shy threshold, and a ventilated lung volume (VLung) was created using a 50th centile SUV threshold. For each patient four IMRT plans were created, optimised to the anatomical lung, HPLung, HVLung and VLung volumes, respectively. Improvements in functional dose volumetrics when optimising to functional volumes were assessed using mean lung dose (MLD), V5, V10, V20, V30, V40, V50 and V60 parameters. Results: The study cohort consisted of 20 patients with 80 IMRT plans. Plans optimised to HPLung resulted in a significant reduction of functional MLD by a mean of 13.0% (1.7 Gy), p = 0.02. Functional V5, V10 and V20 were improved by 13.2%, 7.3% and 3.8% respectively (p-values <0.04). There was no significant sparing of dose to functional lung when adapting to VLung or HVLung. Plan quality was highly consistent with a mean PTV D95 and D5 ranging from 60.8 Gy to 61.0 Gy and 63.4 Gy to 64.5 Gy, respectively, and mean conformity and heterogeneity index ranging from 1.11 to 1.17 and 0.94 to 0.95, respectively. Conclusion: IMRT plans adapted to perfused but not ventilated lung on 4D-V/Q PET/CT allowed for reduced dose to functional lung whilst maintaining consistent plan quality. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.