Koninklijke Philips Corporation N.v.

Elekta, Inc.

Christoph Neukirchen

Alfonso Agatino Isola

Rolf Jürgen Weese

Torbjoern Vik

Harald Sepp Heese

Juergen Weese

Heinrich Schulz

Steffen Renisch

Sven Kabus

Jens Wiegert

Matthias Bertram

Hrishikesh Narayanrao Deshpande

Rolf Juergen Weese

Matthieu Frédéric Bal

Maria Luiza Bondar

Stéphane Allaire

Joerg Bredno

Daniel Bystrov

Alexandra Groth

Marco Baragona

Sabine Mollus

Daniel Simon Anna Ruijters

Georg Rose

Matthieu Frederic Bal

Colas Schretter

Disclosed herein is a medical system () comprising a processor (). Execution of the machine executable () instructions causes a processor () to: receive () three-dimensional medical image data () descriptive of a subject (); receive () a desired ablation volume (), wherein the desired ablation volume is registered to the three-dimensional medical image data; receive () one or more protected volumes (); generate () a discrete set of ablation probe positions (); receive () a discrete set of ablation patterns (); initialize () a composite ablation binary mask (); and initialize () a sequential ablation probe configuration list (). Execution of the machine executable instructions further causes the processor to iteratively generate the sequential ablation probe configuration list by repeatedly: determining () an unablated volume () by comparing the composite ablation binary mask to the desired ablation volume; determining () a chosen ablation probe configuration () using a chosen objective function () dependent upon the one or more protected volumes, the unablated volume, the discrete set of ablation patterns, and the discrete set of ablation probe positions; update () the composite ablation binary mask by calculating a union between the composite ablation binary mask and the one of the discrete set of ablation patterns located at the one of the discrete set of ablation probe positions; and add () the chosen ablation probe configuration to the sequential ablation probe configuration list.

Determining ablation probe configuration

A device for optimizing a radiation therapy plan () for delivering therapeutic radiation to a patient using a therapeutic radiation source () while modulated by a multi-leaf collimator (MLC) () includes at least one electronic processor () connected to a radiation therapy device (). A non-transitory computer readable medium () stores instructions readable and executable by the at least one electronic processor to perform a radiation therapy plan optimization method () including: optimizing MLC settings of the MLC respective to an objective function wherein the MLC settings define MLC leaf tip positions for a plurality of rows of MLC leaf pairs at a plurality of control points (CPs). The optimizing is performed in two or more iterations with a resolution of the MLC settings increasing in successive iterations.

Fast generation of multi-leaf collimator (MLC) openings using hierarchical multi-resolution matching

A system includes a computing system with a processor and computer readable storage medium with computer readable and executable instructions, including a radiation plan module, a radiation plan optimization module and a radiation plan visualization module. The processor is configured to execute the instructions, which causes the processor to construct and visually present, via a display monitor, a two-dimensional plot with three-dimensions of data from a radiation plan, and two dimensions along two axes of the plot and a third dimension represented through intensity.

Visualization of volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) plans

The invention relates to a system for planning a radiation therapy treatment. The system obtains a first treatment plan generated in accordance with values of parameters quantifying an amount of radiation provided by radiation components, obtains an instruction to change a radiation dose delivered to at least one volume element, and directly calculates, for each of the radiation components, a change of the amount of radiation provided by the radiation component based on the instruction and based on the contribution of the radiation component to the radiation dose delivered to the at least one volume element. In order to observe upper and/or lower thresholds of the parameter values, the updated parameter values are calculated by iteratively adding the determined changes to the parameter values until a parameter value reaches the threshold or until the desired dose change is realized.

Treatment plan generation for radiation therapy treatment

The invention relates to a system for assisting in evaluating a contour of an anatomic structure () with respect to a dose distribution corresponding to a treatment plan for a radiation therapy treatment of a patient. The system comprises an evaluation unit particularly configured to evaluate the dose distribution in varying distances from the contour of the anatomic structure () to determine at least one point where the evaluated dose distribution fulfills a predetermined condition, and to determine the distance between the at least one point and the contour and/or to visualize the at least one point to a user of the system.

Evaluation of an anatomic structure with respect to a dose distribution in radiation therapy planning

The invention relates to a dynamic sliding-window-like initialization for, for example, iterative VMAT algorithms. Specifically, a dynamic sliding window conversion method is contemplated where typical dynamic VMAT constraints are taken into account to find an optimal set of suitable openings (i.e. binary masks) that can be used as quasi-feasible start initialization for any VMAT algorithm that can refine until a deliverable plan is reached. Here, a multileaf leaf tip trajectory least square constrained optimization is performed to find a set of optimal unidirectional trajectories for all MLC leaf pairs of all arc points. To ensure that a quasi-feasible (or better quasi-deliverable) solution is returned, for example, a maximum dose rate, a maximum gantry speed, a maximum leafs speed, and a maximum treatment time may be enforced.

Warm start initialization for external beam radiotherapy plan optimization

In planning of radiation therapy treatment of at least one structure in a region of a patient body, a first treatment plan is generated on the basis of a planning image of the body region and on the basis of dose objectives. A further image of the body region of the patient body is received, and a transformation is determined for generating an adapted treatment plan from the first treatment plan and/or for generating an adapted dose distribution from the dose distribution corresponding to the first treatment plan on the basis of the further image and determines an adapted treatment plan on the basis of the transformation and/or the adapted dose distribution. The transformation on the basis of the dose objectives. In adapting the dose distribution, an efficient iterative dosimetric patient setup optimization may be employed to reduce the dose computations.

Planning system for adaptive radiation therapy

The invention relates to a system and a method for evaluating a treatment plan for an external radiation therapy treatment, the treatment plan comprising parameters for controlling an external radiation therapy apparatus during the treatment. The system comprises a database storing historic treatment plans and storing for each historic treatment plan a quality parameter indicative of whether a deviation between a planned dose distribution and a measured dose distribution resulting from an execution of the treatment plan is within an acceptable limit. An evaluation unit determines a threshold value for each of a plurality of treatment plan metrics based on the historic treatment plans and the associated quality parameters. Further, the evaluation unit calculates a value of each of the metrics for the treatment plan and compares the value of each of the metrics with the threshold value determined for the respective metric.

Evaluation of dose accuracy of radiation therapy treatment plans

A radiation planning system includes a predictor-corrector optimizer unit which computes a predicted dose based on a collection of control points with a current approximate dose, each control point with a corresponding set of leaf positions, and determines an additional control point with a corresponding set of leaf positions based on a difference of the predicted fluence and the current approximate fluence through a least cost or shortest path in a layered graph structure of realizable leaf positions. Tools are described to help a planner to evaluate the effect of parameter changes to the current plan based on an identified zone of influence. The planner interactively views the current plan based on a visualization of the plan objectives and correlations between the objectives.

Radiation therapy planning optimization and visualization

The present invention relates to a radiotherapy planning system () for determining a solution () corresponding to a fluence profile. The invention proposes to use a Pareto frontier navigator () to select the best plan from a set of various auto-planned solutions. An interactive graphical user interface () is provided to the planner to navigate among convex combinations of auto-planned solutions. This proposed Pareto plan navigation can be considered as a further optional refinement process, which can be applied to find the best plan in those cases where auto-generated solutions are not fully satisfying the planner's requirements. The navigation tool () moves locally through a set of auto-generated plans and can potentially simplify the planner's decision making process and reduce the whole planning time on complex clinical cases from several hours to minutes.

Radiotherapy planning system and method

A method and apparatus are provided to improve large field of view CT image acquisition by using at least two scanning procedures: (i) one with the radiation source and detector centered and (ii) one in an offset configuration. The imaging data obtained from both of the scanning procedures is used in the reconstruction of the image. In addition, a method and apparatus are provided for detecting motion in a reconstructed image by generating a motion map that is indicative of the regions of the reconstructed image that are affected by motion artifacts. Optionally, the motion map may be used for motion estimation and/or motion compensation to prevent or diminish motion artifacts in the resulting reconstructed image. An optional method for generating a refined motion map is also provided.

Method and apparatus for large field of view imaging and detection and compensation of motion artifacts

An apparatus () and a method for adjusting, in perfusion imaging system, a periodic contrast agent injection rate signal (IS) for an injector () as function of an image sampling rate determined by the rotational speed of an X-ray source ()-detector () assembly of an X-ray imager (). Frequency, periodicity and pulse width of the contrast agent injection rate signal (IS) is adjusted to mitigate temporal signal aliasing in a sample of a time attenuation contrast (TAC) signal.

Periodic contrast injections and analysis of harmonics for interventional X-ray perfusion imaging

The invention relates to a device for determining illumination distributions () for IMRT. A layered graph structure is used, which considers which extensions of an illumination distribution along a respective line and thus which illumination distributions are realizable, for determining extensions for the illumination distributions. Moreover, second weights defining fluences of the illumination distributions are determined such that a deviation between a provided fluence map and a fluence map formed by a combination of illumination distributions, which are defined by the respective determined extensions and the respective second weight, is minimized. This determination procedure leads to illumination distributions, which very well correspond to the provided fluence map and which are automatically realizable by the radiation device. This leads to an improved IMRT, wherein a post-processing of the determined illumination distributions for ensuring that the determined illumination distributions are really realizable is not necessarily required.

Device for determining illumination distributions for IMRT

Adaptively controlling an imaging system () includes constructing model feature characteristics () of a process over time, determining parameters and commands () for controlling the imaging system for each state of the process, performing data acquisition () for the process, extracting current features () of the process from the acquired data, matching () the current features () with the model feature characteristics () to determine a state of the process (), and controlling the data acquisition based on the state of the process to produce optimized data.

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Aachen, Germany

Christoph Neukirchen