Accelerated partial breast irradiation: a dosimetric comparison of three different techniques.

Purpose: We report the first single-institutional dosimetric comparison of patients treated with three forms of accelerated partial breast irradiation: interstitial HDR brachytherapy, the MammoSite balloon apparatus, and 3D conformal external beam quadrant irradiation (3D-CRT).

Methods: A retrospective dosimetric comparison of interstitial HDR brachytherapy, MammoSite balloon brachytherapy, and 3D-CRT was performed. Thirty patients including 10 from each treatment technique were included for a dosimetric comparison of the dose received by the ipsilateral breast, PTV, heart, and ipsilateral lung.

The validity of surgical clips as a radiographic surrogate for the lumpectomy cavity in image-guided accelerated partial breast irradiation.

Purpose: We hypothesize that surgical clips placed in the biopsy cavity during lumpectomy can be used as radiographic markers to facilitate image-guided external beam accelerated partial breast irradiation.

Methods And Materials: We evaluated 28 patients with surgically placed clips in the lumpectomy cavity and two CT scans on different days. To establish whether the clips remain predictive of the lumpectomy cavity throughout therapy, we analyzed the motion of both cavities with repeat volumetric CT scans.