Cardiotoxicity caused by postoperative radiotherapy can increase the risk of cardiovascular adverse events in patients with breast cancer, especially those with left breast cancer, which is proportional to the dose of radiation to the heart. It has been proved that deep inspiration breath-hold (DIBH) technique can significantly reduce the cardiac dose in patients with left breast cancer, but the benefits of this technique vary greatly among different patients, and its implementation requires additional equipment, time, manpower and other resources. Hence, it is necessary to select patients who are suitable for this technique in advance. In addition to comprehensive analysis of general factors before simulation positioning that affect DIBH selection, this review also systematically summarized relevant indicators of CT simulation positioning images. These anatomical indicators included the measurement of the cardiac contact distances in parasagittal (CCD_ps) plane, the lateral heart-to-chest distance (HCD), the product of maximum heart width (HW_max) and the maximum heart depth (HD_max) during CT simulation positioning, and the maximum heart distance, heart volume in the irradiation field (HVIF), the difference of lung volume and heart volume between free breathing (FB) and DIBH measured after CT localization. All of them showed some instructive significance for evaluating whether DIBH should be applied in tangent field based radiotherapy planning. The automatic planning (rapid plan) function in the treatment planning system could quickly predict the benefit of DIBH for breast cancer patients. The purpose of this article is to help clinicians select patients who are suitable for DIBH technique, guaranteeing that DIBH technique resources can be used reasonably.

Breast neoplasms / radiotherapy; Deep inspiration breath-hold; Patients selecting