Dose-distribution estimation in proton therapy

A method of estimating a dose from a proton therapy plan, comprising:

• subdividing a representation of a volume of interest into a plurality of voxels;
• determining a first distance associated with a planned proton field and a first voxel of the plurality of voxels;
• and
• computing a metric based on the first distance and a second distance associated with a target volume traversed by the planned proton field.

A computer program product for estimating a dose from a proton therapy plan, comprising:

• a non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium encoded with instructions adapted to be executed by a processor to implement:
• subdividing a representation of a volume of interest into a plurality of voxels;
• determining a first distance associated with a planned proton field and a first voxel of the plurality of voxels;
• computing a metric based on the first distance and a second distance associated with a target volume traversed by the planned proton field, the metric representing a first discrete contribution at the first voxel to an estimated dose received by the volume of interest;
• and
• summing a plurality of discrete contributions corresponding to the plurality of voxels to yield an estimated dose corresponding to the volume of interest, the plurality of discrete contributions including the first discrete contribution.