Program Information
Optimizing the Delivery of Sequential Fluence Maps for Efficient VMAT Delivery
D Craft1*, M Balvert2 , (1) Massachusetts General Hospital, Cambridge, MA, (2) Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands
Presentations
WE-AB-209-10 (Wednesday, August 3, 2016) 7:30 AM - 9:30 AM Room: 209
Purpose:
To develop an optimization model and solution approach for computing MLC leaf trajectories and dose rates for high quality matching of a set of optimized fluence maps to be delivered sequentially around a patient in a VMAT treatment.
Methods:
We formulate the fluence map matching problem as a nonlinear optimization problem where time is discretized but dose rates and leaf positions are continuous variables. For a given allotted time, which is allocated across the fluence maps based on the complexity of each fluence map, the optimization problem searches for the best leaf trajectories and dose rates such that the original fluence maps are closely recreated. Constraints include maximum leaf speed, maximum dose rate, and leaf collision avoidance, as well as the constraint that the ending leaf positions for one map are the starting leaf positions for the next map. The resulting model is non-convex but smooth, and therefore we solve it by local searches from a variety of starting positions. We improve solution time by a custom decomposition approach which allows us to decouple the rows of the fluence maps and solve each leaf pair individually. This decomposition also makes the problem easily parallelized.
Results:
We demonstrate method on a prostate case and a head-and-neck case and show that one can recreate fluence maps to high degree of fidelity in modest total delivery time (minutes).
Conclusion:
We present a VMAT sequencing method that reproduces optimal fluence maps by searching over a vast number of possible leaf trajectories. By varying the total allotted time given,this approach is the first of its kind to allow users to produce VMAT solutions that span the range of wide-field coarse VMAT deliveries to narrow-field high-MU sliding window-like approaches.
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