Evaluating the Effect of the Silicone Prosthesis on the Photon Dose Distribution in Radiation Therapy of Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy among women which in some cases is followed by breast reconstructions. The objective of the experimental study is to investigate the effect of the silicone prosthesis implementation on the dose distribution of radiotherapy.

Initially CT images of 7 mastectomy breast patients with silicone prosthesis were imported to the Monaco treatment planning system. A treatment plan consisting of two tangential photon fields with a prescription dose of 50Gy was arranged. To study the effect and water equivalency of silicone prosthesis, dose distribution of treatment plan was acquired in two conditions: 1) considering the real electron density of silicone prosthesis; 2) modifying (Relative electron density) RED of silicone prosthesis to 1 to virtually assume it as soft tissue (water). The results were then compared by VeriSoft software to evaluate the gamma index.

The obtained results indicated that the RED for the silicon prosthesis varies between 0.7 and 1.14 while the RED for soft tissue is approximately 1. Also, the Dose-volume histogram curves for both conditions indicated that the minimum and maximum differences ranged from 1% to 4%. The significant differences might be due to the presence of the air cavity or bubbles in the silicone prosthesis implementation or air voxels between prostheses and soft tissue.

The obtained results showed that if there is no air cavity in silicone prosthesis and the surgery is performed in a way that no volume of air is left between the prosthesis and breast tissue, the effect and presence of silicone prosthesis will be similar to soft tissue (water).