Predicting Post-Stereotactic Radiotherapy Magnetic Resonance Images: A Proof-of-Concept Study in Breast Cancer Metastases to the Brain

Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) can provide effective local control of breast cancer metastases to the brain while limiting damage to surrounding healthy tissues. Knowledge-based algorithms have been reported that can alleviate the manual aspects of radiation dose planning, but these do not currently provide voxel-level dose prescriptions that are optimized for tumor control and avoidance of radionecrosis and associated toxicity. On the assumption that a voxelwise relationship exists between pre-SRS MR images, the RT dose map, and the resulting post-SRS MR images, we have investigated a deep learning framework to predict the latter from the former two.