Dose–surface maps identifying local dose–effects for acute gastrointestinal toxicity after radiotherapy for prostate cancer

We evaluated dose distributions in the anorectum and its relation to acute gastrointestinal toxicities using dose surface maps in an image-guided (IG) IMRT and 3D-conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT) population.For patients treated to 78 Gy with IG-IMRT (n=260) or 3D-CRT (n=215), for whom acute toxicity data were available, three types of surface maps were calculated: (1) total anorectum using regular intervals along a central axis with perpendicular...