Dosimetric impact of orthopedic metal artifact reduction (O‐MAR) on spine SBRT patients

The dosimetric impact of orthopedic metal artifact reduction (O-MAR) on spine SBRT patients has not been comprehensively studied, particularly with spinal prostheses in high-dose gradient regions. Using both phantom and patient datasets, we investigated dosimetric effects of O-MAR in combination of various metal locations and dose calculation algorithms. A physical phantom, with and without a titanium insert, was scanned. A clinical patient plan was applied to the artifact-free reference, non-O-MAR, and O-MAR phantom images with the titanium located either inside or outside of the tumor. Subsequently, five clinical patient plans were calculated with pencil beam and Monte Carlo (iPlan) on non-O-MAR and O-MAR patient images using an extended CT-density table. The dose differences for phantom plans and patient plans were analyzed using dose distributions, dose-volume histograms (DVHs), gamma index, and selected dosimetric endpoints. From both phantom plans and patient plans, O-MAR did not affect dose distributions and DVHs while minimizing metal artifacts. Among patient plans, we found that, when the same dose calculation method was used, the difference in the dosimetric endpoints between non-O-MAR and O-MAR datasets were small. In conclusion, for spine SBRT patients with spinal prostheses, O-MAR image reconstruction does not affect dose calculation accuracy while minimizing metal artifacts. Therefore, O-MAR images can be safely used for clinical spine SBRT treatment planning.