Improving regional dose distribution while maintaining high delivery efficiency for hypofractionated whole breast radiotherapy

Skin toxicities, particularly in the inframammary fold areas are noted for patients receiving hypofractionated whole breast radiation therapy. In this study, a hybrid modulated beam technique was developed to tackle such a problem. The technique aimed to achieve significant dose improvements to the inframammary region while maintaining the robustness and treatment delivery efficiency similar to that of 3D conformal treatment delivery. The overall treatment time for the technique was about 6 minutes or less for a treatment session delivering a fractional dose of 266 cGy. As a result, clinical centers with a high volume of patients are most likely to benefit from implementing such a technique.