A method for standardizing intensity modulated radiation therapy planning optimization for nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Background: to investigate a method for standardizing intensity modulated radiation therapy (imrt) optimization for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (npc), in order to reduce the influence of subjective factors. materials and methods: this study is based on example imrt plans for npc, which were randomly divided into data acquisition and data verification groups. organs at risk (oars) were analyzed for various sub-organs. the data acquisition group was used for statistical evaluations of the mean value of the normalized mean doses of sub-organs. the data validation group was used to validate the findings. results: significant negative correlations were observed between the normalized mean doses of sub-organs for each oar and the shortest distance between sub-organs and the target region surface. for each oar, there was no statistically significant difference in the normalized mean doses of sub-organs between the data acquisition and verification groups (p > 0.05). conclusion: the influence of subjective factors can be reduced by using the normalized mean doses of suborgans for each oar as the evaluation parameter for standardizing. this method is relatively simple; a majority of radiotherapy centers can apply the model for standardizing imrt planning optimization based on the existing planning system.