Spatial optimization for radiation therapy of brain tumours
Name
journal.pone.0217354.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
733.8 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
2fedbe860ad269ec66880dfb9254f3a1
Author(s)
Meaney, Cameron
Date Issued
June 28, 2019
Journal
PLoS one
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Citation
Meaney, Cameron et al. "Spatial optimization for radiation therapy of brain tumours." PLoS one 14 (2019) © 2019 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Glioblastomas are the most common primary brain tumours. They are known for their highly aggressive growth and invasion, leading to short survival times. Treatments for glioblastomas commonly involve a combination of surgical intervention, chemotherapy, and external beam radiation therapy (XRT). Previous works have not only successfully modelled the natural growth of glioblastomas in vivo, but also show potential for the prediction of response to radiation prior to treatment. This suggests that the efficacy of XRT can be optimized before treatment in order to yield longer survival times. However, while current efforts focus on optimal scheduling of radiotherapy treatment, they do not include a similarly sophisticated spatial optimization. In an effort to improve XRT, we present a method for the spatial optimization of radiation profiles. We expand upon previous results in the general problem and examine the more physically reasonable cases of 1-step and 2-step radiation profiles during the first and second XRT fractions. The results show that by including spatial optimization in XRT, while retaining a constant prescribed total dose amount, we are able to increase the total cell kill from the clinically-applied uniform case.
Subjects
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
General Medicine
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217354
