The use of radiobiological parameters and the evaluation of NTCP models. How do they affect the ability to estimate radiation induced complications?

Abstract

Normal Tissue Complication Probability (NTCP) models currently used, provide a simplified representation of the clinical radiobiology since there are number of radiobiological mechanisms which affect the clinical outcome and are not taken into account by the models. The use of published radiobiological parameter sets in NTCP modeling introduce uncertainties on the dose-response curves due to the fact that each parameter set is accompanied by a certain standard deviation. Therefore, a model is represented by a doseresponse bandwidth creating areas in which different models may coincide. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the models and parameter sets determining the overlapping areas thus estimating the importance of parameter application. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.