The purpose of this study is to investigate the feasibility of using a flattening filter-free (FFF) beam with an endorectal balloon for stereotactic ablative body radiotherapy (SABR) of clinically localized prostate cancer. We assessed plans of SABR with volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT) that used a flattening filter (FF) beam and an FFF beam and compared the verification results of dosim...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study is to investigate the dosimetric characteristics of volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) with flattening filter-free (FFF) beams and assess the role of VMAT in the treatment of advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). METHODS Ten cases of CT data were randomly selected from advanced NPC patients. Three treatment plans were optimized for each patient, Rapid...

To investigate potential dosimetric benefits and treatment efficiency of dynamic conformal arc therapy (DCA), intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), and double partial arcs Rapidarc (RA) techniques in the treatment of early-stage peripheral lung cancer using stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) with flattening filter free (FFF) beams. Twenty early-stage peripheral lung cancer patients w...

PURPOSE To investigate the performance of using partial arc (PA) and full arc with avoidance sectors (FAAS) in stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) of peripheral lung cancer with flattening filter free (FFF) beams. METHODS Eighteen patients with primary (T1 or T2) non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) or lung metastatic were selected for this study. Nine patients with a gross tumor volume (GTV)...

Submitted Volumetric modulated arc therapy for stereotactic body radiotherapy: Planning considerations, delivery accuracy and efficiency

A Monte Carlo model of an Elekta Precise linear accelerator has been built and verified by measured data for a 6 and 10 MV photon beam running with and without a flattening filter in the beam line. In this study the flattening filter was replaced with a 6 mm thick copper plate, provided by the linac vendor, in order to stabilize the beam. Several studies have shown that removal of the filter im...

To the Editor, Volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) serves as a means for stereotactic hypofractionated treatment of lung tumors [1]. The present authors proposed an efficient VMAT sequence by restricting leaf speeds of a multi-leaf collimator per gantry rotation angle to below 1 mm/degree, thereby reducing the dose delivery time down to 210 s for a D95 prescription dose of 50 Gy in four fra...

Conventional volumetric modulated arc therapy (C-VMAT) for breast cancer after radical mastectomy had its limitation that resulted in larger volumes of normal tissue receiving low doses. We explored whether there was a way to deal with this disadvantage and determined the potential benefit of flattening filter-free (FFF) beams.Twenty patients with breast cancer after radical mastectomy were sub...

INTRODUCTION Flattening filter-free (FFF) radiation beams have recently become clinically available on modern linear accelerators in radiation therapy. This study aimed to evaluate the dosimetric impact of using FFF beams in intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) for early-stage upper thoracic oesophageal cancer. METHODS Eleven patients with primary stage upper thoracic oesophageal cancer we...

The aim of this study is to perform a direct comparison of the source model for photon beams with and without flattening filter (FF) and to develop an efficient independent algorithm for planar dose calculation for FF-free (FFF) intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) quality assurance (QA). The source model consisted of a point source modeling the primary photons and extrafocal bivariate Gauss...