A technique to increase the treatment plan indices in GammaKnife: A retrospective study.

The study was to find the optimal values of priority in the inverse planning module of Leksell GammaPlan which would give better treatment plan indices in GammaKnife SRS. The study showed that the best optimised setting of the weighting or priority in the inverse planning module of Leksell GammaPlan were 0.6 for coverage, 0.3 for gradient index and 0.5 for beam on time. Inverse plans (Hybrid Inverse Plan, HIP) which were made using this optimal priority setting were compared with forward plans (FP) with all 95% coverage. The results showed that the average selectivity index (SI) was 83.05±9.68 for FP and 85.35±8.03 for HIP. So, SI improved in the HIP technique by about 2.3% compare to FP. Similarly, average gradient index (GI) for FP and HIP were respectively 2.82±0.23 and 2.76±0.33. And the average beam on time (BT) of FP and HIP were, respectively, 48.15±23.14 min and 48.35±18.09 min. So, all plan indices show improvement in the hybrid inverse planning technique over forward plans. Consequently, this will improve the quality of patient treatment in GammaKnife.