Extracting protobeams for cancer radiation therapy

Abstract

A method and system are provided. The method includes condensing, by a processor, an original voxel-beamlet matrix stored in a memory device into a reduced dataset for proton beam simulation and therapy. The original voxel-beamlet matrix has a row for each of a plurality of voxels in a three-dimensional patient volume and a column for each of a plurality of radiation beamlets. The condensing step includes determining protobeams to be extracted from the original voxel-beamlet matrix. The protobeams are columns (i) selected from the original voxel-beamlet matrix based on comparisons performed between the columns in the original voxel-beamlet matrix or (ii) created by combining at least some of the columns in the original voxel-beamlet matrix, in a matrix condensing process. The condensing step further includes extracting the protobeams from the original voxel-beamlet matrix. The condensing step also includes storing the protobeams as the reduced dataset in the memory device.