Research Interests:
Purpose/Objective: Acute esophagitis is a common side effect of thoracic irradiation. Several dosimetric cutoffs, based on the irradiated surface, volume or length of the esophagus, have been observed to correlate with the occurrence of... more
Purpose/Objective: Acute esophagitis is a common side effect of thoracic irradiation. Several dosimetric cutoffs, based on the irradiated surface, volume or length of the esophagus, have been observed to correlate with the occurrence of esophageal toxicity. However, in practice, these single threshold descriptors often don’t provide useful information for discrimination among rival treatment plans or for optimization of IMRT. Thus, there is interest in exploring the use of standard NTCP models (such as the Lyman-Kutcher-Burman model, LKB) for characterization of esophageal toxicities. This study evaluates the ability of the LKB model to predict esophagitis by determining updated model parameters and then comparing these new results with the predictive value of other dosimetric parameters.