TY  - JOUR
A1  - Richter, Anne
A1  - Exner, Florian
A1  - Bratengeier, Klaus
A1  - Polat, Bülent
A1  - Flentje, Michael
A1  - Weick, Stefan
T1  - Impact of beam configuration on VMAT plan quality for Pinnacle\(^3\)Auto-Planning for head and neck cases
T2  - Radiation Oncology
N2  - Background
The purpose of this study was to compare automatically generated VMAT plans to find the superior beam configurations for Pinnacle3 Auto-Planning and share “best practices”.

Methods
VMAT plans for 20 patients with head and neck cancer were generated using Pinnacle3 Auto-Planning Module (Pinnacle3 Version 9.10) with different beam setup parameters. VMAT plans for single (V1) or double arc (V2) and partial or full gantry rotation were optimized. Beam configurations with different collimator positions were defined. Target coverage and sparing of organs at risk were evaluated based on scoring of an evaluation parameter set. Furthermore, dosimetric evaluation was performed based on the composite objective value (COV) and a new cross comparison method was applied using the COVs.

Results
The evaluation showed a superior plan quality for double arcs compared to one single arc or two single arcs for all cases. Plan quality was superior if a full gantry rotation was allowed during optimization for unilateral target volumes. A double arc technique with collimator setting of 15° was superior to a double arc with collimator 60° and a two single arcs with collimator setting of 15° and 345°.

Conclusion
The evaluation showed that double and full arcs are superior to single and partial arcs in terms of organs at risk sparing even for unilateral target volumes. The collimator position was found as an additional setup parameter, which can further improve the target coverage and sparing of organs at risk.
KW  - auto-planning
KW  - VMAT
KW  - single arc
KW  - double arc
KW  - full arc
KW  - partial arc
KW  - plan comparison
Y1  - 2019
UR  - https://opus.bibliothek.uni-wuerzburg.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/20030
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-200301
VL  - 14
ER  -