A control circuit accesses historical information regarding previously optimized radiation treatment plans for different patients and processes that information to determine the relative importance of different clinical goals. The circuit then facilitates development of a particular plan for a particular patient as a function of the relative importance of the clinical goals. By one approach the control circuit can be configured as a radiation treatment plan recommendation resource that accesses a database of radiation treatment plan formulation content items including at least one of a radiation treatment plan template, an auto-planning algorithm, and an auto-segmentation algorithm. By one approach the control circuit can be configured to, when presenting automatically-generated radiation treatment plans to a user, also co-present an opportunity for the user to signal to a remote entity that none of the plans are acceptable and that the user will instead employ a user-generated plan for the particular patient.

A method of obtaining an interpolated treatment plan is based on interpolating between associated dose distributions through optimization with respect to an optimization problem comprising optimization functions based on deviations from clinical goals. The method may suitably be used to improve navigated plans resulting from multi-criteria optimization.

Linear accelerator (“linac”) downtime invariably impacts delivery of patients' scheduled treatments. Transferring a patient's treatment to an available linac is a common practice. Transferring a VMAT plan from a linac equipped with a standard-definition MLC to one equipped with a higher definition MLC is practical and routine in clinics with multiple MLC-equipped linacs. However, the reverse transfer presents a challenge because the high-definition MLC aperture shapes must be adapted for delivery with the lower definition device. An efficient method to adapt VMAT plans originally designed for a high-definition MLC to a standard definition MLC is disclosed herein. The dosimetric results of the present adaptation method are presented for head-and-neck, brain, lung and prostate VMAT plans. The delivery of the adapted plans was verified using standard phantom measurements.

An example particle therapy system includes a particle accelerator to output a particle beam having a spot size; a scanning system for the particle accelerator to scan the particle beam in two dimensions across at least part of a treatment area of an irradiation target; and an adaptive aperture between the scanning system and the irradiation target. The adaptive aperture includes structures that are movable relative to the irradiation target to approximate a shape to trim part of the treatment area. The part of the treatment area has a size that is based on an area of the spot size.

An example particle therapy system includes a particle accelerator to output a particle beam having a spot size; a scanning system for the particle accelerator to scan the particle beam in two dimensions across at least part of a treatment area of an irradiation target; and an adaptive aperture between the scanning system and the irradiation target. The adaptive aperture includes structures that are movable relative to the irradiation target to approximate a shape to trim part of the treatment area. The part of the treatment area has a size that is based on an area of the spot size.

Disclosed herein are methods for patient setup and registration for the irradiation of target tissue regions. A method for positioning a patient for radiation therapy may include acquiring an image of a first patient target region and a second patient target region. A first set of patient position-shift vectors may be calculated based on the acquired image and a treatment planning image of the first patient target region. A second set of patient position-shift vectors may be calculated based on the acquired image, a treatment planning image of the second patient target region, and the first set of patient position-shift vectors. The patient may be positioned according to the first set of patient position-shift vectors in a first location. The patient may be moved to a second location and positioned according to the second set of patient position-shift vectors.

A radiation dose received by a patient from a radiation therapy system can be verified by acquiring a cine stream of image frames from an electronic portal imaging device (EPID) that is arranged to detect radiation exiting the patient during irradiation. The cine stream of EPID image frames can be processed in real-time to form exit images providing absolute dose measurements at the EPID (dose-to-water values), which is representative of the characteristics of the radiation received by the patient. Compliance with predetermined characteristics for the field can be determined during treatment by periodically comparing the absolute dose measurements with the predetermined characteristics, which can include a predicted total dose in the field after full treatment and/or a complete irradiation area outline (CIAO). The system operator can be alerted or the irradiation automatically stopped when non-compliance is detected.

Embodiments are directed generally to an ionizing-radiation beamline monitoring system that includes a vacuum chamber structure with vacuum compatible flanges through which an incident ionizing-radiation beam enters the monitoring system. Embodiments further include at least one scintillator within the vacuum chamber structure that can be at least partially translated in the ionizing-radiation beam while oriented at an angle greater than 10 degrees to a normal of the incident ionizing-radiation beam, a machine vision camera coupled to a light-tight structure at atmospheric/ambient pressure that is attached to the vacuum chamber structure by a flange attached to a vacuum-tight viewport window with the camera and lens optical axis oriented at an angle of less than 80 degrees with respect to a normal of the scintillator, and at least one ultraviolet (“UV”) illumination source facing the scintillator in the ionizing-radiation beam for monitoring a scintillator stability comprising scintillator radiation damage.

The invention relates to a slat for collimating therapy radiation, comprising a collimation region made from a first material; and a holding region made from a second material, wherein the collimation region and the holding region are connected together by a connection point, the first material is configured to collimate therapy radiation, and the holding region is couplable to an adjusting facility for adjusting the slat.

A method for determining a radiotherapy treatment plan can include: receiving anatomical data for a patient; generating, via a neural network analyzing the anatomical data, a plurality of fitness values for a plurality of candidate beam orientations; determining a selected beam orientation based on the plurality of fitness values; performing a fluence map optimization (FMO) process on the selected beam orientation; and determining a dose distribution for the patient based on the FMO process.