Intelligence Guidence in Beam Optimization of Radiotherapy

Intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) was developed in order to deliver a highly conformal dose to tumor while bearing surrounding normal tissue, especially critical organs, under clinically acceptable dose level. For achieving this goal, multiple beams with modulated fluence maps from different angles were required. This raised the issue of how to optimally select the beams to best meet the clinical goal of radiotherapy. This book provided an intelligence guided approach based on fuzzy inference system to automate beam angle optimization in treatment planning of IMRT. A fuzzy inference system was established in simulating the reasoning process of human planners while they were working on treatment planning of IMRT. Two spinal cases were investigated in this study and the preliminary results show that dose quality of IMRT plans achieved by this approach is superior to those achieved by the default approach with equally spaced beam setting. It discovered the potential of fuzzy inference system on IMRT optimization, and especially useful for those who may consider utilizing automated software tool in beam angle optimization of treatment planning of IMRT.