Deep learning based time series analysis for breathing phase prediction in phase-gated proton therapy

OBJECTIVE: Phase gating is a critical technique to mitigate tumor motion during radiotherapy, particularly in spot-scanned particle therapy (SSPT) where internal motion can interfere with dynamic spot scanning patterns and, simultaneously, introducing substantial range uncertainties. However, the current commercial state of the art in real-time phase prediction is challenged by patient-specific breathing variability as well as detection and delivery system latencies. This leads to suboptimal efficiency, mis-timed radiation delivery and requires frequent manual intervention. This study aims to improve phase prediction accuracy using deep learning (DL)-based time series forecasting to enable more accurate dose delivery. APPROACH: Retrospective breathing waveforms from 69 proton therapy patients, sampled at 30 Hz, were labeled with inspiratory peaks and assigned subjective regularity scores (four levels). DL models with various architectures were trained using waveform amplitude to predict current or future breathing phases. Model performance was evaluated using mean squared error, phase binning accuracy, and timing deviation for radiation on/off events. Bayesian optimization was used for hyperparameter tuning. Results were compared between models and against a commercial algorithm currently in clinical use. MAIN RESULTS: The curated waveform dataset included 165,242 seconds for training, 24,057 seconds for validation, and 30,322 seconds for testing, with an additional 40,604 seconds from separate patients for extended validation. The Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Temporal Fusion Transformer (TFT) models significantly outperformed the commercial algorithm, improving phase prediction accuracy by nearly 20% and reducing timing deviations across all regularity levels. SIGNIFICANCE: DL-based time series forecasting may substantially improve breathing phase prediction accuracy over current clinically available methods, offering a more precise and reliable approach to phase-gated radiation delivery.