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Review
. 2017 Jul-Sep;42(3):101-115.
doi: 10.4103/jmp.JMP_22_17.

Magnitude, Impact, and Management of Respiration-induced Target Motion in Radiotherapy Treatment: A Comprehensive Review

Affiliations
Review

Magnitude, Impact, and Management of Respiration-induced Target Motion in Radiotherapy Treatment: A Comprehensive Review

S A Yoganathan et al. J Med Phys. 2017 Jul-Sep.

Abstract

Tumors in thoracic and upper abdomen regions such as lungs, liver, pancreas, esophagus, and breast move due to respiration. Respiration-induced motion introduces uncertainties in radiotherapy treatments of these sites and is regarded as a significant bottleneck in achieving highly conformal dose distributions. Recent developments in radiation therapy have resulted in (i) motion-encompassing, (ii) respiratory gating, and (iii) tracking methods for adapting the radiation beam aperture to account for the respiration-induced target motion. The purpose of this review is to discuss the magnitude, impact, and management of respiration-induced tumor motion.

Keywords: Dynamic multileaf collimator; four-dimensional computed tomography; gating; internal target volume; lung; respiratory motion; tracking.

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Conflict of interest statement

There are no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The internal target volume defined by ICRU 62
Figure 2
Figure 2
Principle of four-dimensional computed tomography image acquisition
Figure 3
Figure 3
The gating treatment based on (a) phase and (b) amplitude
Figure 4
Figure 4
Commercially available external surrogate breathing monitoring systems used in gating

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