Document type
Academic documents
Document subtype
Master's dissertation
Title
Robust evaluation in proton beam therapy for pancreatic cancer
Participants in the publication
Lorenzo Amedeo (Author)
Brígida Ferreira (Adviser)
Dep. Física
IBEB
Joana Dias (Co-adviser)
Humberto Rocha (Co-adviser)
Summary
Cancer is a major cause of death globally and radiation therapy plays an important role in its treatment. Thanks to protons’ physical characteristics, intensity modulated proton beam therapy (IMPT) is an advanced form of radiation therapy that can provide better dose distributions to spare healthy tissues. However, IMPT is more sensitive to uncertainties than other radiation modalities. One of the possibilities to reduce the impact of such uncertainties is taking them into consideration explicitly by applying robust optimization methods. This study aims to evaluate the improvement of treatment plan quality, assess the effect of patient geometry and beam configuration on the results, and evaluate the robustness of treatment plans, following the application of two different algorithms. Firstly Beam Angle Optimization algorithm, whose goal is to optimize beam configurations of the treatment plan; secondly, Automated Fluence Map Optimization algorithm, through which is possible to automatically set weights and parameters of the objectives and constraints functions. The results have highlighted that fluence map optimization has a globally significant and positive impact on improving the quality of treatment plans in dosimetric terms. On the other hand, the evaluation of treatment plan robustness revealed greater robustness for plans related to organs at risk compared to those related to target volumes.
Date of Publication
2023-05-17
Institution
UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI ROMA "LA SAPIENZA"
Publication Identifiers
Download