Cardiac activity can induce dose-volume evaluation errors for cardiac structures. The purpose of this study was to quantify the variation in dose-volume parameters for the heart, pericardium and left ventricular myocardium (LVM) throughout the cardiac circle. The heart, pericardium and LVM of 22 patients were contoured on 20 phases of electrocardiography-gated 4D computed tomography (4DCT) images acquired during breath-hold. Radiotherapy plans were designed on 0% phase of the 4DCT images, and the dose distributions of the plans were imported in...
