Abstract

Accounting for respiratory motion is a crucial part of providing safe and effective lung radiation therapy. The three main motion management techniques for lung stereotactic body radiation therapy are deep inspiration breath hold (DIBH), free breathing (FB), and respiratory gating (RG). This thesis will provide an overview of many aspects of medical physics, including the physics of radiation, the biology of cancer, and the mathematics of data analysis. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze lung dose and delivery efficiency of 1,000 patients (403 DIBH, 576 FB, 21 RG) treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The planned lung dose and actual treatment time of these patients were retrospectively collected for statistical comparison. Supplemental analysis was conducted concerning organs at risk and utilizing a classification algorithm. This thesis found that DIBH has the smallest amount of dose delivered to healthy lung tissue, but also takes the longest time to complete. FB is the fastest of our three methods, but it also delivers the most dose to healthy lung tissue. Treatments that utilize RG have a similar efficiency to DIBH and a lower lung dose than FB. Because of its dosimetric advantages, RG may be a beneficial option for patients with middle or lower lung tumors who do not meet the breath hold requirements. The clinical use of a nonstop gated cone-beam CT has potential to increase efficiency of the RG technique and therefore decrease average treatment toxicity.

Advisor

Manz, Niklas

Second Advisor

Bush, Michael

Department

Mathematics; Physics

Disciplines

Health and Medical Physics | Nuclear | Oncology

Keywords

Lung cancer, radiation therapy, SBRT, motion management, respiratory gating

Publication Date

2025

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

Download

Available for download on Tuesday, July 23, 2030

Share

COinS
 

© Copyright 2025 Tali Lansing