Improving interinstitutional and intertechnology consistency of pulmonary SBRT by dose prescription to the mean internal target volume dose.

PURPOSE: Dose, fractionation, normalization and the dose profile inside the target volume vary substantially in pulmonary stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) between different institutions and SBRT technologies. Published planning studies have shown large variations of the mean dose in planning target volume (PTV) and gross tumor volume (GTV) or internal target volume (ITV) when dose prescription is performed to the PTV covering isodose. This planning study investigated whether dose prescription to the mean dose of the ITV improves consistency in pulmonary SBRT dose distributions. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This was a multi-institutional planning study by the German Society of Radiation Oncology (DEGRO) working group Radiosurgery and Stereotactic Radiotherapy. CT images and structures of ITV, PTV and all relevant organs at risk (OAR) for two patients with early stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were distributed to all participating institutions. Each institute created a treatment plan with the technique commonly used in the institute for lung SBRT. The specified dose fractionation was 3â€¯× 21.5 Gy normalized to the mean ITV dose. Additional dose objectives for target volumes and OAR were provided. RESULTS: In all, 52 plans from 25 institutions were included in this analysis: 8 robotic radiosurgery (RRS), 34 intensity-modulated (MOD), and 10 3D-conformal (3D) radiation therapy plans. The distribution of the mean dose in the PTV did not differ significantly between the two patients (median 56.9 Gy vs 56.6 Gy). There was only a small difference between the techniques, with RRS having the lowest mean PTV dose with a median of 55.9 Gy followed by MOD plans with 56.7 Gy and 3D plans with 57.4 Gy having the highest. For the different organs at risk no significant difference between the techniques could be found. CONCLUSIONS: This planning study pointed out that multiparameter dose prescription including normalization on the mean ITV dose in combination with detailed objectives for the PTV and ITV achieve consistent dose distributions for peripheral lung tumors in combination with an ITV concept between different delivery techniques and across institutions.

Structure and dynamics of a salt-bridge model system in water and DMSO.

We study the interaction between the ions methylguanidinium and trifluoroacetate dissolved in D2O and dimethylsulfoxide with linear infrared spectroscopy and femtosecond two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy. These ions constitute model systems for the side chains of arginine and glutamic and aspartic acid that are known to form salt bridges in proteins. We find that the salt-bridge formation of methylguanidinium and trifluoroacetate leads to a significant acceleration of the vibrational relaxation dynamics of the antisymmetric COO stretching vibration of the carboxyl moiety of trifluoroacetate. Salt-bridge formation has little effect on the rate of the spectral fluctuations of the CN stretching vibrations of methylguanidinium. The anisotropy of the cross peaks between the antisymmetric COO stretching vibration of trifluoroacetate and the CN stretching vibrations of methylguanidinium reveals that the salt-bridge is preferentially formed in a bidentate end-on configuration in which the two C=O groups of the carboxylate moiety form strong hydrogen bonds with the two -NH2 groups of methylguanidinium.

Femtosecond mid-infrared study of the dynamics of water molecules in water-acetone and water-dimethyl sulfoxide mixtures.

We study the vibrational relaxation dynamics and the reorientation dynamics of HDO molecules in binary water-dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and water-acetone mixtures with polarization-resolved femtosecond mid-infrared spectroscopy. For low solute concentrations we observe a slowing down of the reorientation of part of the water molecules that hydrate the hydrophobic methyl groups of DMSO and acetone. For water-DMSO mixtures the fraction of slowed-down water molecules rises much steeper with solute concentration than for water-acetone mixtures, showing that acetone molecules show significant aggregation already at low concentrations. At high solute concentrations, the vibrational and reorientation dynamics of both water-DMSO and water-acetone mixtures show a clear distinction between the dynamics of water molecules donating hydrogen bonds to other water molecules and the dynamics of water donating a hydrogen bond to the S═O/C═O group of the solute. For water-DMSO mixtures both types of water molecules show a very slow reorientation. The water molecules forming hydrogen bonds to the S═O group reorient with a time constant that decreases from 46 ± 14 ps at XDMSO = 0.33 to 13 ± 2 ps at XDMSO = 0.95. The water molecules forming hydrogen bonds to the C═O group of acetone show a much faster reorientation with a time constant that decreases from 6.1 ± 0.2 ps at Xacet = 0.3 to 2.96 ± 0.05 ps at Xacet = 0.9. The large difference in reorientation time constant of the solute-bound water for DMSO and acetone can be explained from the fact that the hydrogen bond between water and the S═O group of DMSO is much stronger than the hydrogen bond between water and the C═O group of acetone. We attribute the strongly different behavior of water in DMSO-rich and acetone-rich mixtures to their difference in molecular shape.

Observation of vibrational energy exchange in a type-III antifreeze protein.

We performed time- and polarization-resolved pump-probe and two-dimensional infrared (2D-IR) experiments to study the dynamics of the amide I vibration of a 7 kDa type-III antifreeze protein. In the pump-probe experiments, we used femtosecond mid-infrared pulses to investigate the vibrational relaxation dynamics of the amide mode. The transient spectra show the presence of two spectral components that decay with different lifetimes, indicative of the presence of two distinct amide subbands. The 2D-IR experiments reveal the coupling between the two bands in the form of cross-peaks. On the basis of previous work by Demirdöven et al. ( J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2004 , 126 , 7981 - 7990 ), we assign the observed bands to the two infrared-active modes α(-) and α(+) found in protein ß-sheets. The amplitudes of the cross-peak were found to increase with delay time, indicating that the cross-peaks originate from population transfer between the coupled amide oscillators. The time constant of the energy transfer was found to be 6-7 ps.