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Abstract Background The accuracy of intensity‐modulated proton therapy (IMPT) is greatly affected by anatomy variations that might occur during the treatment course. Online plan adaptations have been proposed as a solution to intervene promptly during a treatment session once the anatomy changes are detected. The implementation of online‐adaptive proton therapy (OAPT) is still hindered by time‐consuming tasks in the workflow. Purpose The study introduces the novel concept of partial adaptation and aims at investigating its feasibility as a potential solution to parallelize tasks during an OAPT workflow for saving valuable in‐room time. Methods The proof‐of‐principle simulation study includes datasets from six head and neck cancer (HNC) patients, each consisting of one planning CT (pCT) and three contoured control CTs (cCTs). Robust 3‐field normo‐fractionated initial IMPT plans were generated on the pCTs with a standardized field configuration, delivering 66 Gy and 54 Gy to the high‐risk and low‐risk clinical target volume (CTV High and CTV Low ), respectively. For each cCT, a dose‐mimicking‐based partial adaptation was applied: two fields were adapted on the current anatomy taking into account the background dose of the first non‐adapted field supposedly delivered in the meantime. Fraction doses on the cCTs resulting from partially adapted plans with different first (non‐adapted) field assignments were compared against those from non‐adapted and fully adapted plans regarding target coverage and organs at risk (OARs) sparing. The robustness of partially adapted plans was also evaluated. Results Partially adapted plans showed comparable results to fully adapted plans and were superior to non‐adapted plans for both target coverage and OAR sparing. Target coverage degradation in the non‐adapted plans (median D 98% : 95.9% and 97.5% for CTV Low and CTV High , respectively) was recovered by both partial (98.0% and 98.5%) and full adaptation (98.2% and 98.7%) in comparison to the initial plans (98.7% and 98.8%). The initial hotspot dose for the CTV High (median D 2% : 101.8%) increased in the non‐adapted plans (102.9%) and was recovered by the adaptive strategies (partial: 102.5%, full: 101.9%). The near‐maximum dose ( D 0.01cc ) to brainstem and spinal cord was within clinical constraints for all investigated dose distributions, but clearly increased for no adaptation and improved in the (both partially and fully) adapted plans with respect to the non‐adapted ones. The parotids’ median doses ( D 50 ) were mainly patient‐specific depending on the proximity to the target region, but anyway lower for the partially and fully adapted plans compared to the non‐adapted ones. OAR sparing was furthermore improved for the partially adapted plans in comparison to full adaptation. Robustness of the target dose metrics was preserved in all evaluated scenarios. Conclusions For OAPT of HNC patients, partial adaptation is able to generate plans of superior conformity to non‐adapted plans and of comparable conformity as fully adapted plans, while having the potential to speed up the online‐adaptive workflows. Thus, partial adaptation represents an intermediate approach until fast online adaptation workflows become available. Furthermore, it can be applied in workflows where online treatment verification stops the delivery and triggers an online adaptation for the remaining fraction.
Gambetta et al. (Wed,) studied this question.