A cost-outcome analysis of Image-Guided Patient Repositioning in the radiation treatment of cancer of the prostate.

Background And Purpose: With Image-Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT) rapidly gaining acceptance in the clinic it is timely to commence an assessment of its potential outcome benefit versus costs.

Materials And Methods: Using Activity-Based Costing we have calculated the incremental cost of adding Image-Guided Patient Repositioning (IGPR), a significant component of IGRT, to both Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) and Three-Dimensional Conformal Radiation Therapy (3DCRT) for prostate cancer. The dosimetric outcome benefit resulting from the implementation of IGPR is estimated from a publication describing the improvement in set-up accuracy using each of four correction protocols.

Phantom evaluation of a commercially available three modality image guided radiation therapy system.

The authors describe a detailed evaluation of the capabilities of imaging and image registration systems available with Varian linear accelerators for image guided radiation therapy (IGRT). Specifically, they present modulation transfer function curves for megavoltage planar, kilovoltage (kV) planar, and cone beam computed tomography imaging systems and compare these with conventional computed tomography. While kV planar imaging displayed the highest spatial resolution, all IGRT imaging techniques were assessed as adequate for their intended purpose.

The cost of radiation therapy.

Background And Purpose: The rising cost of health care is of universal concern. If the cost effectiveness of conventional and novel radiotherapeutic strategies is to be established we need to have confidence in our estimates of both cost and effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to explore the degree of consistency of recently published cost estimates for radiation therapy.