A Mathematical Model of Tumor Volume Changes during Radiotherapy

PURPOSE To develop a clinically viable mathematical model that quantitatively predicts tumor volume change during radiotherapy in order to provide treatment response assessment for prognosis, treatment plan optimization, and adaptation. METHOD AND MATERIALS The correction factors containing hypoxia, DNA single strand breaks, potentially lethal damage, and other factors were used to develop an improved cell survival model based on the popular linear-quadratic model of cell survival in radiotherapy. The four-level cell population model proposed by Chvetsov et al. was further simplified by removing the initial hypoxic fraction and reoxygenation parameter, which are hard to obtain in routine clinics, such that an easy-to-use model can be developed for clinical applications. The new model was validated with data of nine lung and cervical cancer patients. RESULTS Out of the nine cases, the new model can predict tumor volume change in six cases with a correlation index R (2) greater than 0.9 and the rest of three with R (2) greater than 0.85. CONCLUSION Based on a four-level cell population model, a more practical and simplified cell survival curve was proposed to model the tumor volume changes during radiotherapy. Validation study with patient data demonstrated feasibility and clinical usefulness of the new model in predicting tumor volume change in radiotherapy.