Purpose: To compare three different methods of propagating the gross tumor volume (GTV) through the respiratory phases that constitute a four-dimensional computed tomography image data set.
Methods and materials: Four-dimensional computed tomography data sets of 20 patients who had undergone definitive hypofractionated radiotherapy to the lung were acquired. The GTV regions of interest (ROIs) were manually delineated on each phase of the four-dimensional computed tomography data set. The ROI from the end-expiration phase was propagated to the remaining nine phases of respiration using the following three techniques: (1) rigid-image registration using in-house software, (2) rigid image registration using research software from a commercial radiotherapy planning system vendor, and (3) rigid-image registration followed by deformable adaptation originally intended for organ-at-risk delineation using the same software. The internal GTVs generated from the various propagation methods were compared with the manual internal GTV using the normalized Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) index.
Results: The normalized DSC index of 1.01 +/- 0.06 (SD) for rigid propagation using the in-house software program was identical to the normalized DSC index of 1.01 +/- 0.06 for rigid propagation achieved with the vendor's research software. Adaptive propagation yielded poorer results, with a normalized DSC index of 0.89 +/- 0.10 (paired t test, p <0.001).
Conclusion: Propagation of the GTV ROIs through the respiratory phases using rigid- body registration is an acceptable method within a 1-mm margin of uncertainty. The adaptive organ-at-risk propagation method was not applicable to propagating GTV ROIs, resulting in an unacceptable reduction of the volume and distortion of the ROIs.