ROSS (Robust optimization and scenario selection) in the context of proton therapy treatment planning

Proton therapy offers great potential to improve external radiotherapy treatment because of the peak of energy deposited by protons at the end of a well-defined range ('Bragg peak'). However, the range of the protons is very sensitive to anatomical and physical uncertainties, which jeopardizes the quality of the treatment. Treatment plans can be made robust to these uncertainties by incorporating them directly in the optimization process ('robust optimization'). However, each type of uncertainty should ideally be modeled individually, which can be extremely demanding computationally and in terms of memory requirements. The aim of this research project is to reduce the burden over the optimizer by selecting uncertainties that have a significant effect and by simplifying their modeling.

Keywords:ROSS, Robust optimization, proton therapy, scenario selection, treatment planning

Disciplines:Morphological sciences, Oncology