Intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) for complex sites such as tumors of the head and neck requires a level of accuracy in dose calculation beyond that currently used for conformal treatment planning. Recent advances in treatment planning systems have aimed to improve the dose calculation accuracy by improving the modeling of machine characteristics such as interleaf leakage, tongue and groo...

We present a method to implement probabilistic treatment planning of intensity-modulated radiation therapy using custom software plugins in a commercial treatment planning system. Our method avoids the definition of safety-margins by directly including the effect of geometrical uncertainties during optimization when objective functions are evaluated. Because the shape of the resulting dose dist...

Abstract Introduction: Thanks to modern IGRT procedures, it is possible track changes in the patient's anatomy and thus calculate dose distribution for current anatomical conditions of patient. This allows scheduled be compared with delivered dose. In case large discrepancies, improve treatment plan. Radiotherapy, during which plan modified, resulting from anatomy, referred as adaptive radiothe...

Scripting in radiotherapy treatment planning systems not only simplifies routine planning tasks but can also be used for clinical research. Treatment planning scripting can only be utilized in a system that has a built-in scripting interface. Among the commercially available treatment planning systems, Pinnacle (Philips) and Raystation (Raysearch Lab.) have inherent scripting functionality. CMS...

Background: Identify the optimal technique of radiotherapy for patients with high grade glioma. Our initial year of experience with RapidArc radiation therapy. Materials and Methods: Planning CT scans of 50 patients with grade IV glioma were reviewed and three plan sets by 3D Conformal Radiotherapy (3DCRT), Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT) and Rapid Arc (RA) were generated and the plans ...

Introduction Xerostomia is one of side-effects of radiotherapy for head and neck cancers. No definitive method has been proposed for the treatment of this condition. However, pilocarpine is considered effective for the management of chronic xerostomia. The purpose of the present study was to assess the preventive effect of pilocarpine. Materials and Methods This study was performed on 34 patien...

We have developed a treatment planning protocol for intensity-modulated radiation therapy of the prostate using commercially available inverse planning software. Treatment plans were developed for ten patients using the Corvus version 3.8 planning system, testing various prescription options, including tissue types, dose volume histogram values for the target and normal structures, beam arrange...

The intent of this review is to give insight in the present status and on the prospective future of proton therapy. The major point of reference is conventional therapy with photons. Traditional radiotherapy is showing nowadays a very rapid progress using advanced dynamic beam delivery techniques and sophisticated computer algorithms for treatment planning. The new fashionable concepts in medic...

Introduction An essential step in radiation therapy is accurate three-dimensional segmentation of the target and organs at risk. Traditionally, this has been done by manual contouring on a slice-by-slice basis, but modern adaptive radiation therapy (ART) protocols can require segmentation of multiple daily images for each patient [1], increasing the pressure to develop automated methods for seg...

PURPOSE To build a new treatment planning approach that extends beyond radiation transport and IMRT optimization by modeling the radiation therapy process and prognostic indicators for more outcome-focused decision making. METHODS An in-house treatment planning system was modified to include multiobjective inverse planning, a probabilistic outcome model, and a multi-attribute decision aid. A ...