An automated treatment planning strategy for highly noncoplanar radiotherapy arc trajectories

Radiation therapy is a technology-driven cancer treatment modality that has experienced significant advances over the last decades, due to multidisciplinary contributions that include engineering and computing. Recent technological developments allow the use of noncoplanar volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT), one of the most recent photon treatment techniques, in clinical practice. In this work, an automated noncoplanar arc trajectory optimization framework designed in two modular phases is presented. First, a noncoplanar beam angle optimization algorithm is used to obtain a set of noncoplanar irradiation directions. Then, anchored in these directions, an optimization strategy is proposed to compute an optimal arc trajectory. The computational experiments considered a pool of twelve difficult head-and-neck tumor cases. It was possible to observe that, for some of these cases, the optimized noncoplanar arc trajectories led to significant treatment planning quality improvements, when compared with coplanar VMAT treatment plans. Although these experiments were done in a research environment treatment planning software (matRad), the conclusions can be of interest for a clinical setting: automated procedures can simplify the current treatment workflow, produce high-quality treatment plans, making better use of human resources and allowing for unbiased comparisons between different treatment techniques.     

Concerning the Data of Numerical and Physical Experiments in Studying the Adsorption of Gas and Vapors in Micropores of Active Carbons

Protection of Metals and Physical Chemistry of Surfaces - The conditions for carrying out molecular dynamics calculations of adsorption isotherms of gases and vapors in micropores of active carbons...     

Evaluation of Intellectual Property Objects in the Nanoindustry Field

Russian Microelectronics - The recently developed nanomaterials and their production technologies as intellectual property objects (IPOs) are considered. The role of the informational-analytical...     

The Influence of the Sequence of Application of Modifying Components on the Protective Properties of a Chemical Ammonia Absorber

Protection of Metals and Physical Chemistry of Surfaces - In this work, a universal sorbent has been obtained that works according to the mechanisms of chemisorption and adsorption by impregnating...     

A Light Weight Secure Communication Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Personal Communications - The majority of security systems for wireless sensor networks are based on symmetric encryption. The main open issue for these approaches concerns the...     

Characterization of Aluminum Foam Impact Response

Strength of Materials - The paper addresses the investigation of high-strain rate compressive behavior of Al foams subjected to impact at the intermediate striking velocity ranged from 40 to...     

Processing Metallic Bismuth to Produce Citrate

Theoretical Foundations of Chemical Engineering - Using chemical and XRD phase analysis, along with electron microscopy, the hydrolytic processing of metallic bismuth into high-purity citrate has...     

Hardening of Rods by High-Frequency Current

Russian Engineering Research - Improvement in the wear resistance of plunger-pump rods is considered. Hardening by high-frequency current is proposed.