Methods and apparatus for the planning and delivery of radiation treatments
AssigneeSiemens Healthineers International AG
InventorKarl Otto
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Methods and apparatus are provided for planning and delivering radiation treatments by modalities which involve moving a radiation source along a trajectory relative to a subject while delivering radiation to the subject. In some embodiments the radiation source is moved continuously along the trajectory while in some embodiments the radiation source is moved intermittently. Some embodiments involve the optimization of the radiation delivery plan to meet various optimization goals while meeting a number of constraints. For each of a number of control points along a trajectory, a radiation delivery plan may comprise: a set of motion axes parameters, a set of beam shape parameters and a beam intensity.
Claims20
A system for delivering a radiation dose to a target area within a subject, the system comprising:
- a radiation source for emitting a radiation beam;
- a radiation beam positioning mechanism configured to move the radiation source and the radiation beam along a trajectory;
- and
- a control system configured to control the radiation beam positioning mechanism to deliver the radiation beam to the subject along an optimized trajectory;
- wherein the control system is configured to determine the optimized trajectory by:
- defining a set of one or more optimization goals, the set of one or more optimization goals comprising a desired dose distribution in the subject and optimization of a metric based on a radiobiological model;
- defining an initial trajectory for relative movement between the radiation source and the subject and an initial plurality of control points along the initial trajectory;
- and
- iteratively optimizing a simulated dose distribution relative to the set of one or more optimization goals to determine one or more radiation delivery parameters associated with each of the control points;
- wherein the one or more radiation delivery parameters comprise a position of the radiation source relative to the subject and wherein iteratively optimizing the simulated dose distribution comprises defining an optimized trajectory for relative movement between the radiation source and the subject based on the one or more radiation delivery parameters;
- the control system being further configured to:
- effect relative movement between the radiation source and the subject along the optimized trajectory and, while effecting the relative movement between the radiation source and the subject along the optimized trajectory, control the delivery of the radiation beam from the radiation source to the subject according to a determined radiation delivery plan to impart a dose distribution on the subject.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.