Radiotherapy treatment plan evaluation and improvement
A radiotherapy treatment plan may be evaluated based on a combination of two or more metrics, by the steps of simulating the result of delivery of the plan, obtaining values from the simulation for at least a first and a second metric, performing a multivariate analysis of the values and determining a quality of the plan based on the result of the multivariate analysis. The metrics may include at least one of dose, LET, track ends, RBE, alpha/beta ratio and statistical uncertainty of the plan.
1 . A computer-based method of evaluating a radiotherapy treatment plan, comprising:
simulating a predicted result of delivery of the plan to obtain per-voxel for at least a first and a second metric for a treatment volume, wherein the first metric is related to dose, and wherein the second metric is one of the following: LET, dirty dose, track ends, RBE, alpha/beta ratio, and statistical uncertainty;
analyzing the obtained per-voxel values, the analyzing including segmenting the treatment volume by defining a first interval for the first metric and a second interval for the second metric, and assigning to a segment the voxels whose values for both metrics fall within the respective intervals;
evaluating a quality of the plan by comparing at least one condition expressed in terms of the voxel segmentation to a corresponding clinical goal; and
in response to the evaluation, performing a workflow action selected from: delivering radiation therapy in accordance with the plan to a patient, modifying the plan, and discarding the plan.
2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein presenting a visual representation includes:
visualizing the identified voxels in an image.
3 . The method of claim 2 , further comprising identifying in the image the voxels associated with a user-selected region.
4 . A non-transitory computer program product, comprising a computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions being executable by a processor to cause the processor to perform the method of claim 1 .
5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein:
the analyzing further comprises generating, from the per-voxel values, a two-dimensional volume histogram that represents a distribution of voxel counts over intervalizations of the first and second metrics; and
the evaluating comprises comparing at least one condition expressed in terms of the two-dimensional volume histogram to the clinical goal.
6 . The method of claim 5 , wherein the clinical goal specifies a limit on a proportion of voxels within a defined interval pair of the two-dimensional volume histogram.
7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein modifying the plan comprises repeating the simulation with increased accuracy when statistical uncertainty exceeds a threshold in a clinically relevant region.
8 . A computer system comprising a processor and a program memory, the program memory containing instructions that when executed by the processor causes the processor to perform a method of evaluating a radiotherapy treatment plan including the following steps:
simulating a predicted result of delivery of the plan to obtain per-voxel values for at least a first and a second metric for a treatment volume, wherein the first metric is related to dose, and wherein the second metric is one of the following: LET, dirty dose, track ends, RBE, alpha/beta ratio, and statistical uncertainty;
analyzing the obtained per-voxel values, the analyzing including segmenting the treatment volume by defining a first interval for the first metric and a second interval for the second metric, and assigning to a segment the voxels whose values for both metrics fall within the respective intervals;
evaluating a quality of the plan by comparing at least one condition expressed in terms of the voxel segmentation to a corresponding clinical goal; and
in response to the evaluation, performing a workflow action selected from: delivering radiation therapy in accordance with the plan to a patient, modifying the plan, and discarding the plan.