Estimation of linear energy transfer distribution for broad-beam carbon-ion radiotherapy at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, Japan

TL;DR

This study develops a method to estimate linear energy transfer (LET) in carbon-ion radiotherapy, enabling better integration of biological effects into treatment planning by relating LET to RBE data.

Contribution

A novel approach to estimate LET from existing RBE data, improving treatment planning accuracy in carbon-ion radiotherapy.

Findings

LET estimation aligns with original calculations within a few keV/μm

Method effectively relates LET to RBE for treatment planning

Overkill at the distal end of SOBP was observed

Abstract

Carbon-ion radiotherapy (CIRT) is generally evaluated with the dose weighted by relative biological effectiveness (RBE), while the radiation quality varying in the body of each patient is ignored for lack of such distribution. In this study, we attempted to develop a method to estimate linear energy transfer (LET) for a treatment planning system that only handled physical and RBE-weighted doses. The LET taken from a database of clinical broad beams was related to the RBE per energy with two polyline fitting functions for spread-out Bragg peak (SOBP) and for entrance depths, which would be selected by RBE threshold per energy per modulation. The LET estimation was consistent with the original calculation typically within a few keV/{\mu}m except for the overkill at the distal end of SOBP. The CIRT treatments can thus be related to the knowledge obtained in radiobiology experiments that used LET to represent radiation quality.