Developing predictive dose-voume relationships for a radiotherapy treatment

A radiation therapy system for predicting a dose-volume relationship for a radiation therapy treatment, the system comprising:

• a memory area storing:
• a model that predicts dose-volume relationships for a radiation therapy treatment using three-dimensional representations of a planning target volume of a new patient and one or more organs-at-risk of the new patient, the model being derived from correlations between the dose-volume relationships and minimum distance vectors of a plurality of patients;
• and
• new patient data including three-dimensional representations of a planning target volume of a new patient and one or more organs-at-risk of the new patient;
• a display device;
• and
• a processor programmed to:
• access the new patient data;
• calculate a plurality of minimum distance vectors between discrete volume elements of the one or more organs-at-risk of the new patient and a boundary surface of the planning target volume of the new patient;
• predict dose-volume relationships for the planning target volume and the one or more organs-at-risk of the new patient using the stored model and the calculated minimum distance vectors for the new patient;
• and
• display the predicted dose-volume relationships for the planning target volume and the one or more organs-at-risk of the new patient on the display device.

A method comprising:

• receiving a training set of training treatment plans, each training treatment plan including radiation therapy treatment including a three-dimensional representation of a planning target volume and one or more organs-at-risk of a prior patient, and an amount of radiation delivered to the planning target volume and the one or more organs-at-risk of the prior patient;
• determining, for each training treatment plan, a plurality of minimum distance vectors between discrete volume elements of the one or more organs-at-risk and a boundary surface of the planning target volume;
• determining, for each training treatment plan, a dose-volume relationship corresponding to an irradiation of at least one organ-at-risk,
• developing a model that predicts dose-volume relationships for a new patient using three-dimensional representations of a planning target volume of the new patient and one or more organs-at-risk of the new patient, the model being derived from correlations between the determined dose-volume relationships and minimum distance vectors.