Limitations of a convolution method for modeling geometric uncertainties in radiation therapy. I. The effect of shift invariance

Convolution methods have been used to model the effect of geometric uncertainties on dose delivery in radiation therapy. Convolution assumes shift invariance of the dose distribution. Internal inhomogeneities and surface curvature lead to violations of this assumption. The magnitude of the error resulting from violation of shift invariance is not well documented. This issue is addressed by comparing dose distributions calculated using the Convolution method with dose distributions obtained by Direct Simulation. A comparison of conventional Static dose distributions was also made with Direct Simulation. This analysis was performed for phantom geometries and several clinical tumor sites. A modification to the Convolution method to correct for some of the inherent errors is proposed and tested using example phantoms and patients. We refer to this modified method as the Corrected Convolution. The average maximum dose error in the calculated volume (averaged over different beam arrangements in the various phantom examples) was 21% with the Static dose calculation, 9% with Convolution, and reduced to 5% with the Corrected Convolution. The average maximum dose error in the calculated volume (averaged over four clinical examples) was 9% for the Static method, 13% for Convolution, and 3% for Corrected Convolution. While Convolution can provide a superior estimate of the dose delivered when geometric uncertainties are present, the violation of shift invariance can result in substantial errors near the surface of the patient. The proposed Corrected Convolution modification reduces errors near the surface to 3% or less. (C) 2003 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.