Plan quality and consistency in spine radiosurgery treatment planning: comparison between automatic treatment planning with Elements Spine SRS and manual inverse planning with Varian Eclipse.

Spine radiosurgery treatment planning can be a challenging task since a high radiation dose is delivered to target volumes close to the spinal cord, therefore a steep dose gradient is required. Plan quality is greatly influenced by the planner skills, so automatic treatment planning has been proposed to overcome this issue and assure high-quality plans. The Brainlab Elements Spine SRS treatment planning system is specially designed for spine radiosurgery treatments.

Patient-based low dose cone beam CT acquisition settings for prostate image-guided radiotherapy treatments on a Varian TrueBeam linear accelerator.

Objective: To evaluate the performance of low dose cone beam CT (CBCT) acquisition protocols for image-guided radiotherapy of prostate cancer.

Methods: CBCT images of patients undergoing prostate cancer radiotherapy were acquired with the settings currently used in our department and two low dose settings at 50% and 63% lower exposure. Four experienced radiation oncologists and two radiation therapy technologists graded the images on five image quality characteristics.

Hypofractionated volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) for fragile patients with oesophageal cancer.

Purpose: To evaluate the feasibility, safety, and dosimetric results of volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) to deliver hypofractionated radiotherapy (RT) in oesophageal cancer patients, unfit for a multimodality curative strategy.

Patients/methods: From 2010 to 2017, 22 patients were treated with hypofractionated VMAT for palliative/symptomatic setting. The prescription dose was 40 Gy in 16 fractions (EQD2 41.

Feline leishmaniosis due to Leishmania infantum in Italy.

A case of leishmaniosis in domestic cats (Felis catus domesticus) is described. The subject showed a nodular lesion on the eyelid. The diagnosis was achieved by serological, parasitological, and light and electron microscopic investigations.