Modeling Internal Radiation Therapy

A new technique is described to model (internal) radiation therapy. It is founded on morphological processing, in particular distance transforms. Its formal basis is presented as well as its implementation via the Fast Exact Euclidean Distance (FEED) transform. Its use for all variations of internal radiation therapy is described. In a benchmark trial, FEED proved to be truly exact as well as faster than a comparable technique. These features can be of crucial importance in radiation therapy as the balance between maximization of treatment effect and doses that cause unwanted damage to healthy tissue is fragile. This balance can be secured using the modeling technique presented here.