Does irregular breathing impact on respiratory gated radiation therapy of lung stereotactic body radiation therapy treatments?

The impact of irregular breathing on respiratory gated radiation therapy (RGRT) was evaluated for lung stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) treatments. Measurements in the static mode were performed with different field sizes, depths of the measurements, breathing periods and duty cycles, using the Farmer ion chamber, PinPoint ion chamber, and microDiamond detector. The output constancy (OC) was evaluated between gated and nongated beams. Measurements in the dynamic mode for regular and irregular breathing in phase- and amplitude-gated modes, were performed with the amplitude of target motion from 5 mm to 25 mm, and breathing period from 3 to 6 s, for ion chamber, and film inserts. The dose discrepancy was evaluated for the ion chamber insert. The gamma passing rate was evaluated with film dosimetry. In the static mode, the maximum obtained OC was 0.8% using the Farmer ion chamber, 1% (p < 0.001) using the microDiamond detector, and 1.4% (p < 0.001) using the PinPoint ion chamber. In the dynamic mode, good agreement between planned and measured doses was obtained for regular breathing, 2.08 ± 0.48% (1.57 to 2.74%), which increased to 3.42 ± 1.24% (1.58 to 6.69%) for irregular breathing. The gamma passing rate of 3mm/3%, 3mm/2%, 3mm/1% and 2mm/2% was 99.4% ± 0.3, 98.2 ± 0.8%, 88.2 ± 3.0% and 96.4 ± 1.0% for regular and 97.2% ± 1.6%, 95.1 ± 2.6%, 85.6 ± 3.0% and 92.9 ± 2.9% for irregular breathing patterns (p < 0.01), respectively. For a slightly irregular breathing amplitude, lung SBRT cancer patients can be treated in the phase-gated mode.