Immersive Visualization with Automated Collision Detection for Radiotherapy Treatment Planning

摘要

Intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) is a technique for treating cancer tumours using external delivery of radiation. To create a treatment plan the directions of the external radiation beams (typically 5 to 9) need to be specified. Normally the beams are all coplanai due to the added complexity of planning and patient set-up for non-coplanar beams RTStar provides a virtual environment of a radiotherapy (RT) treatment room that provides a range of views and visualizations that aid a treatment planner to choose non-coplanat beam directions efficiently. RTStai also automatically warns the planner when a collision would occur during patient set-up. A study was conducted on 8 prostate IMRT cancer patients using RTStar to create RT plans using non-coplanar beams. The study demonstrated that these IMRT prostate plans with non-coplanar beams had a dosimetric advantage over their coplanar conterparts.