System and method for robust intensity-modulated proton therapy planning

A treatment planning system for use in intensity-modulated proton therapy, comprising:

• a memory for storing thereon a representation of a subject and a proton beam configuration, wherein the representation of the subject includes information related to target and non-target volumes of interest and the proton beam configuration describes a number of beamlets and their respective arrangement;
• a processor for receiving the representation of the subject and the proton beam configuration from the memory and for generating a treatment plan based on the representation of the subject and the proton beam configuration;
• a display for displaying the treatment plan;
• and
• wherein the processor generates the treatment plan by:
• computing a dose distribution for each one of a plurality of uncertainty scenarios, wherein each dose distribution is computed based on the representation of the subject and the proton beam configuration;
• computing a robustness index for respective locations in the target volumes of interest using the computed dose distributions;
• optimizing an objective function to determine a set of intensity weights for each beamlet in the proton beam configuration, wherein the objective function is based at least in part on deviations of each computed robustness index from a prescribed robustness index;
• and
• generating the treatment plan using the intensity weights determined by optimizing the objective function.