Insights into the dosimetric and geometric characteristics of stereotactic radiosurgery for multiple brain metastases: A systematic review

by Godfrey Mukwada, Crispen Chamunyonga, Pejman Rowshanfarzad, Suki Gill, Martin A. Ebert

Background

GammaKnife (GK) and CyberKnife (CK) have been the mainstay stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) solution for multiple brain metastases (MBM) for several years. Recent technological advancement has seen an increase in single-isocentre C-arm linac-based SRS. This systematic review focuses on dosimetric and geometric insights into contemporary MBM SRS and thereby establish if linac-based SRS has matured to match the mainstay SRS delivery systems.

Methods

The PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus databases were interrogated which yielded 891 relevant articles that narrowed to 20 articles after removing duplicates and applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Primary studies which reported the use of SRS for treatment of MBM SRS and reported the technical aspects including dosimetry were included. The review was limited to English language publications from January 2015 to August 2023. Only full-length papers were included in the final analysis. Opinion papers, commentary pieces, letters to the editor, abstracts, conference proceedings and editorials were excluded. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines were followed. The reporting of conformity indices (CI) and gradient indices, V12Gy, monitor units and the impact of translational and rotational shifts were extracted and analysed.

Results

The single-isocentre technique for MBM dominated recent SRS studies and the most studied delivery platforms were Varian. The C-arm linac-based SRS plan quality and normal brain tissue sparing was comparable to GK and CK and in some cases better. The most used nominal beam energy was 6FFF, and optimised couch and collimator angles could reduce mean normal brain dose by 11.3%. Reduction in volume of the healthy brain receiving a certain dose was dependent on the number and size of the metastases and the relative geometric location. GK and CK required 4.5–8.4 times treatment time compared with linac-based SRS. Rotational shifts caused larger changes in CI in C-arm linac-based single-isocentre SRS.

Conclusion

C-arm linac-based SRS produced comparable MBM plan quality and the delivery is notably shorter compared to GK and CK SRS.