Computerized tomographic simulation compared with clinical mark-up in palliative radiotherapy: a prospective study.

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of computed tomographic (CT) planning in comparison to clinical mark-up (CM) for palliative radiation of chest wall metastases.

Methods And Materials: In patients treated with CM for chest wall bone metastases (without conventional simulation/fluoroscopy), two consecutive planning CT scans were acquired with and without an external marker to delineate the CM treatment field. The two sets of scans were fused for evaluation of clinical tumor volume (CTV) coverage by the CM technique.