Treatment planning

A particle therapy system comprising:

• a particle accelerator to output a particle beam for application to an irradiation target;
• a configurable collimator comprising (a) sets of parallel leaves that are extendible and retractable in a dimension and (b) carriages coupled to the sets of parallel leaves;
• one or more non-transitory machine-readable storage media storing (i) a library containing (a) first information defining positions of the sets of the leaves and (b) a configuration of the carriages, the positions of the sets of leaves being based on which of the leaves are extended and which of leaves are extracted, and (ii) instructions that are executable by one or more processing devices;
• and
• a control system comprising one or more processing devices configured to execute the instructions to perform operations comprising:
• receiving, from a treatment planning process, second information comprising a dose distribution for an area of the irradiation target to be treated using the particle beam;
• obtaining a coarse beam spot set based on a minimum dosage of the particle beam and a maximum dosage of the particle beam, the coarse beam spot set comprising representations of spots of the particle beam that approximate a target dose of the particle beam to be applied to the area of an irradiation target to be treated using the particle beam, the minimum dosage comprising a minimum dosage to be applied to the area, and the maximum dosage comprising a maximum dosage to be applied outside of the area;
• causing the spots in the coarse beam spot set to change to more closely approximate the dose distribution of the particle beam;
• retrieving at least some of the first information from the library based on the changed spots in the coarse beam spot set;
• controlling the configurable collimator to move to the area;
• and
• controlling the leaves and the carriages to be configured in the area based on the retrieved first information to trim the particle beam;
• wherein the carriages comprise:
• a primary carriage to move the leaves relative to the irradiation target in a first dimension relative to the irradiation target that is different from the dimension in which the leaves are extendible and retractable;
• and
• secondary carriages coupled to the primary carriage to move the leaves in a second dimension relative to the irradiation target, the second dimension being the dimension in which the leaves are extendible and retractable.

One or more non-transitory machine-readable storage media storing:

• a library containing first information defining (a) positions of sets of parallel leaves of a configurable collimator that are extendible and retractable in a dimension to produce trimmed spots of a particle beam and (b) a configuration of carriages on the configurable collimator, the positions of the leaves being based on which of the leaves are extended and which of leaves are extracted;
• receiving, from a treatment planning process, second information comprising a dose distribution for an area of an irradiation target to be treated using the particle beam;
• obtaining a coarse beam spot set based on a minimum dosage of the particle beam and a maximum dosage of the particle beam, the coarse beam spot set comprising representations of spots of the particle beam that approximate a target dose of the particle beam to be applied to the area of the irradiation target to be treated using the particle beam, the minimum dosage comprising a minimum dosage to be applied to the area, and the maximum dosage comprising a maximum dosage to be applied outside of the area;
• causing the spots in the coarse beam spot set to change to more closely approximate the dose distribution of the particle beam;
• retrieving at least some of the first information from the library based on the changed spots in the coarse beam spot set;
• controlling the configurable collimator to move to the area;
• and
• controlling the leaves and at least one of the carriages to be configured in the area based on the retrieved first information to trim the particle beam;
• wherein the carriages comprise:
• a primary carriage coupled to the leaves to move the leaves relative to the irradiation target in a first dimension relative to the irradiation target that is different from the dimension in which the leaves are extendible and retractable;
• and
• secondary carriages coupled to the primary carriage and to the leaves to move the leaves in a second dimension relative to the irradiation target, the second dimension being the dimension in which the leaves are extendible and retractable.